New York's Lascivious Nineteenth-Century Publishing Industry

Tales of illicit affairs, fancy books, and responses to both bring immediate attention to Donna Dennis' Licentious Gotham, a close-up view of the pornography and erotica industries in nineteenth-century New York City. Her work draws on a vast array of existing research but manages to find its own place within that context. Not unlike Steven Marcus' groundbreaking The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth Century England, published half a century ago, Dennis' study focuses on the hot topic of forbidden and titillating sex, but illuminates the subject in new ways by contextualizing the observations within the framework of American law and by focusing specifically on the role that the country's major metropolis played in the growth and development of this underground industry. In the process, she provides cultural and legal perspectives that contribute to a book dense with information that is pertinent and accessible to a range of scholars and students of history, law, sociology, and literature. Additionally, she presents this information in a cogent, articulate manner that compels the reader to continue reading. In short, it is a first-rate study that clearly deserves scholarly attention.

Though Dennis breaks Licentious Gotham into eight chapters, most of the content easily fits into three categories: the characters (publishers and those fighting against them), the growth of the industry, and the changes in obscenity laws during the period. In the category of "characters," she presents readers with a variety of personalities and develops a rapport with her audience as she recounts the ways in which these individuals helped shape the industry. Take John McDowall, for example, the Magdalen Society's New York organizer who fought to suppress both the spread of pornographic literature and the burgeoning prostitution industry. Dennis explains how McDowall's overzealous desire to expose social ills led officials to charge him with indecency due to his "improper, even perverse interest in revealing the inner workings of libertinism" (p. 13). Similarly, the attempts to control and limit the trade or even to prosecute its publishers actually fueled public enthusiasm and the thirst for fancy books and other illicit items. In contrast, the men and women who were responsible for the industry in many ways "typified the era of the self-made man" by maintaining a "keen appetite for profit, a bold capacity for risk taking, and remarkable resilience and versatility in the face of adversity"—all characteristics which ultimately led to their success (p. 127). It is precisely this type of observation that balances Dennis' work. By looking at the industry from both perspectives, she is able to understand how and why the trade grew in the ways it did.

Similarly, Dennis' characterization of the reformer Anthony Comstock captures the way a single individual could dramatically shape the industry. She describes him as someone with "media awareness and a talent for self-promotion," both of which contributed to his ability to achieve what others could not (p. 239). Eventually, Comstock's special brand of evangelical, moral fervor helped him scar the industry and attain posts as the special agent of the United States Post Office in charge of monitoring obscenity violations and as the secretary and chief agent of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, an off-shoot of the YMCA. His real success, however, came when he recognized and subsequently targeted the three most prominent publishers of pornography in New York: William Haines and his wife, Mary; George Akarman; and Jeremiah Farrell. His persistence also eventually helped him draw enough attention to the problem to prompt Congress to pass the "Comstock Act" in 1873, leading publishers once again to find alternative methods for conveying their goods. This type of detailed characterization serves as one of the hallmarks of Dennis' writing: her ability to create a character who lives off of the page and who can single-handedly help readers understand the significant changes and the...