Includes bibliographical references (pages 343-363) and index.
Contents:
A gentle angel -- "In memoriam arcadie" -- "A gentle angel enter'd" -- 1855 : leaves of grass -- Inventing the modern crime of obscenity -- The war against "filth" -- Civil divorce and the invention of sodomy as a crime against the state -- Formative scandals -- Calamus : "paths untrodden" -- Symonds' second scandal -- "Goblin market" : attraction and aversion -- The state seizes the female body -- Love and literature driven underground -- "I will go with him I love" -- Regina v. Hicklin : "to deprave and corrupt" -- Dangerous poems -- The anus and the state -- Criminalizing "effeminacy" : the arrests of Fanny and Stella -- "My constant companion" -- Comstock : censorship crosses the Atlantic -- Counter-campaigns and resistance -- The arrests of Simeon Solomon -- Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh -- "The Greek spirit" -- "Were I as free" : the secret sodomy poems -- Braveries -- Pilgrimage to Camden -- The Labouchere Amendment : "gross indecency" -- Prophets of modernity -- "The life-long love of comrades" -- "A problem in modern ethics" -- "As written by himself" -- Epilogue : afterlives.
Summary:
The best-selling author of Vagina, Give Me Liberty, and The End of America illuminates a dramatic buried story of gay history--how a single English law in 1857 led to a maelstrom, with reverberations lasting down to our day.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.