PRIVATE PRESSES Dismissed As Absurd

PRIVATE PRESSES dismissed as absurd. Last of all, the privacy of the participants and exposing plaintiff's argument that his conduct them to humiliation and punishment, they should be protected because it had oc- should be punished on the fiction that curred in the privacy of his own home was they had deliberately violated the moral rejected. The majority argued that a deci- feclings of others by behaving indecently sionrendered in 1969was "firmly grounded in public. One could hardly imagine a in the First Amendment" and therefore better example of paranoid logic, yet it is inapplicable as the present case did not this type of thinking that underlies the deal with printed material. The minority refusal of the courts to extend the protec- opinion held that homosexuals, like ev- tion of privacy to homosexual behavior. By eryone else, have a "right to be let alone" contrast, in the Dudgeon case (1981)the and that "A way of life that is odd. but European Commission of Human Rights interferes with no rights or interests of in Strasbourg held that laws penalizing others is not to be condemned because it is private homosexual acts violated the right different." of privacy embodied in Article 8 of the Broader Implications. The battle European Convention on Human Rights line remained drawn between those who of 1950. The struggle for the recognition of defend the right of the state to uphold a the right of privacy in this sphere of sexual moral code derived from the canon law of conduct willlikely continue unabated into the medieval church, and those who cher- the twenty-first century. ish the Enlightenment principle that of- See also Law: United States. fenses against religion and morality, so long as they do not violate the rights of BIBLIOGRAPHY. "Dudgeon v. United Kingdom," European Human Rights others or the interests of the state, do not Reports, 3 (1981),40-75; Morris L. Emst fallwithin the scope of the criminal law. In and Alan U. Schwartz, Privacy: The that respect the concept of privacy is a Right to Be Let Alone, New York: legal weapon, an ideological innovation Macrnillan, 1962; Richard D. Mohr, which the defenders of homosexual rights Gaysllustice: A Study of Ethics, Society, and Low, New York: Columbia Univer- seek to interpose between the received sity Press, 1988; David A. J. Richards, law, the jus receptum, and the individual "Sexual Autonomy and the Constitu- having overt sexual relations with a per- tional Right to Privacy: A Case Study in son of the same sex in the interest of a jus Human Rights and the Unwritten recipiendum, a more just law which if Constitution," Hastings Law Journal, 30 [1979),957-1018; Ferdinand David adopted would protect homosexuals in the Schoenman, ed., The Philosophical exercise of sexual freedom. Dimensions of Privacy: An Anthology, The paradox of this situation is Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, that the "deep structure" of society pre- 1984; Roger D. Strode, Jr., "The Consti- scribes that sexual acts be private, that is tutionality of Sodomy Statutes as Applied to Homosexual Behavior," to say, performed out of range of the sight Marquette Law Review, 70 (1987), and hearing of others who would rightly 599-6 11. take offense if the acts were inflicted upon Warren Iohansson their consciousness. A legal commentator in Nazi Germany recognized that private sexual acts harm no one and are seldom PRIVATEPRESSES detected, but argued that if they were Presses that produce books in committed in public they would cause limited quantities not intended for the outrage and scandal; the law should there- regular channels of the book trade are fore proceed asif the private acts had been termed "private." Some of them have had performed in public. In other words, al- to operate clandestinely, as the contents of though the state power is invading the the books would have attracted the atten- 9 PRIVATES PRESSES tion of the authorities by their political or tic of erotic literature: books were pub- sexual nonconformity. lished in France in English for sale to Historical Development. The Englishmen, in Brussels in French for sale invention of the printing press in fifteenth- to Frenchmen, because it was too danger- century Europe, whose cultural life was ous to produce them in the country for still largely under the domination of the which they were destined. Thus the earli- church, did not at first promote the spread est defenses of homosexuality in English of literature on homosexuality. The pagan were printed on the continent in the 1830s; classics, rich as they were in homoerotic of these only the so-calledDon Leon poems passages andallusions, werein time printed have survived. and made accessible to a far larger public Typical of erotica issued by pri- than would ever have seen them in manu- vate presses is the use of false imprints on script. But the potential of the new me- the title page. The place of publication dium forreproducing books and pamphlets may be given as "Sodom and Cythera" or on homosexual themes was realized only "Eleutheropolis" - "Ville Franche" - through clandestine private presses that "Freetown" or even "Partout et nulle part" eluded the repression and censorship exer- (Everywhereand Nowhere]; the publisher cised by the state and the church. The may have a facetious name such as "Uriel issuance of such works was a side activity Bandant" or a classic pseudonym like of aristocratic orgy clubs that could flour- "Pierre Marteau" = "Peter Hammer" or a ish on the privacy of estates to which the parody of some institutionalnamesuch as authorities had no easy access. One of the "Society for Propagationin Foreign Parts." first presses of this kind was created by the Even the year of publication, if not given Duc dlAiguillon on his estate at Verets in wrongly to mislead the authorities into Touraine, which in 1735 issued the Re- believing that this is not a new edition, cueil de pikes choisies, rasscmblt!es par may take the form of "An de la libertk." les soins du Cosmopolite. In England Later in the nineteenth century Horace Walpole, Earl of Oxford, had his such publishers as Auguste Poulet-Malas- own private press somewhat later in the sis, Isidore Liseux, and Charles Carrington century. issued editions of the erotic classics, trans- Subsequently the actual work of lations of foreign works, and even contem- producing such books in a limited edition porary writing for clandestine sale to lov- was transferred to master-printers in the ers of erotica. The British collector Henry publishing capitals of Europe, who issued Spencer Ashbee assembled some 1517 them as custom pieces for wealthy patrons volumes of erotica and kryptadia, among and connoisseurs. With the coming of the themmany booksenlarged withadditional French Revolution, the breakdown of illustrations, which upon his death he authority made it possible for printers to bequeathed to theBritishMuseumLibrary. produce a variety of erotica, some of which For the purpose of illustrating such vol- had an explicitly homosexual content, and umes the talents of artists and engravers of at this time the works of the Marquis de the first rank could be emp!oyed, as the Sade transformed pornography itself by price of a de lwevolume on fine paper ran admitting themes of aberrant and forbid- into several pounds or scores of francs. den sexuality. WhileHolland had been the Works written primarily or exclusively for principal source of clandestine literature a homosexual readership began to appear under the Old Regime, in the nineteenth only toward the end of the nineteenth century France and Belgium took the lead century, when the emerging movement in this area. The phenomenon that has awakened aconsciousness that homoerotic gained the Russian name of tarnizdat literature had a past of its own, together ("publication elsewhere") is characteris- with a public that would buy and collect PRIVATE PRESSES 4 such writings. In Leipzig the Max Spohr upsurge of underground newspapers that firm began openly issuing scholarly publi- probably laid the groundwork for such gay cations in the field during the last decade and lesbian publishers of today as Alyson, of the century. Gay Sunshine Press, and Naiad. The ad- Ephemeral and Popular Material. vent of desktop publishing in the 1980s Naturally private presses could also turn doubled and then tripled the number of out an ephemeral literature, some of it small presses, and made it possible for today known solely from references in authors to publish and distribute their booksellers' catalogues or bibliographers' own works if they wish. lists, in the form of pamphlets, brochures, During the closing years of cen- and similar trivia meant only for brief sorship, photographs of the male body in a diversion. In the United States and Eng- state as close to nudity as current mores land the restrictions on publishing even would allow were circulated in the form of medical and anthropological literature that pictorial magazines, or in a more elegant dealt with homosexuality remained insuch guise, as art books on glossy paper. Much vigor that as late as the 1930s private of this clandestine literature is fast disap- presses were issuing reprints and transla- pearing, as the volumes could not find tions "in 1500 numbered copies for sub- their way into public or scholarly libraries, scribers only." The Nonesuch Press and and in a private collection they were as the Fortune Press in England-which had likely as not to be dispersed or simply ties to Carrington's firm in Paris-were destroyed on the death of the owner. two such ventures. Also, little coteries of Conclusion. The significance of boy-lovers published their verses and the private press was that it undercut the apologetic writings in tiny editions for monopoly of the commercial publishers circulation solely amongthe initiate.

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