Reading, Writing, and Publishing an Obscene Canon: The Archival Logic of the Secret Museum, c. 1860-c. 1900.
Published version
Peer-reviewed
Repository URI
Repository DOI
Change log
Authors
Bull, Sarah
Abstract
This article investigates how a loose network of Victorian book collectors, bibliographers, self-styled sexual scientists, and pornographers represented the obscene as a multifarious category of print, encompassing a generically, historically, and linguistically varied range of works about (or associated in the public imagination with) sex. By examining this elite network's reading, writing, collection, publishing, and advertising practices, this article demonstrates how diversely arrayed publications can, as a result of interacting historical, ideological, and commercial factors, become imaginatively linked, structuring the ways in which they are published, disseminated, and interpreted by their readers.
Description
Keywords
47 Language, Communication and Culture, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology, 4705 Literary Studies
Journal Title
Book History
Conference Name
Journal ISSN
1098-7371
1529-1499
1529-1499
Volume Title
20
Publisher
John Hopkins University Press
Publisher DOI
Sponsorship
I would also like to thank the Wellcome Trust, whose funding provided me with time to complete the paper.