The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture - Softcover

Kendrick, Walter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140109471 ISBN 13: 9780140109474

Publisher: Penguin, 1988

Synopsis

Examines the history of pornography in literature from the nineteenth-century obscenity trials to the days of the Meese Commission, with accounts of the litigation surrounding such classics as "Ulysses" and "Lady Chatterley's Lover"

About this title

Review:

"An engaging, readable, and deeply perceptive analysis that details the evolution of the "idea of pornography and its attendant and ever-changing sensibilities over the last two centuries. [It] patiently attempts to supply a cultural context for not only pornography but also the role that sexuality and imagination themselves play in our lives."--Michael Bronski, "Boston Phoenix

From the Back Cover:

Although erotica has always existed, "pornography" is a recent phenomenon: as late as the eighteenth century the word did not exist. From the secret museums to the pornography trials of Madame Bovary and Lady Chatterly's Lover, to Mapplethorpe, cable TV, and the Internet, Walter Kendrick explores how conceptions of pornography relate to issues of freedom of expression and censorship. He provides, too, a fascinating portrait gallery of the jurists, artists, guardians of public morality, sleaze merchants, and civil libertarians who have played roles in the changing definitions of pornography.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0140109471
• ISBN 13: 9780140109474
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304