Form: Sex-oriented periodicals - Philadelphia Area Archives Search Results

Start Over Form Sex-oriented periodicals

Extent:: 4 linear feet (4 boxes)
Abstract:: Jay A. Gertzman is professor emeritus of English at Mansfield University. This collection includes research material collected and used by Jay Gertzman to produce his book Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica, 1920-1940;. Documents collected here pertain to the proliferation and censorship of erotic material in the era between the two World Wars.

Held at: University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts [Contact Us]

Extent:: 20 items
Abstract:: The Adult was begun in June, 1897 as the "organ of the Legitimation League," a London organization that promoted free unions (cohabitation outside legal marriage) and free love. The journal ran for twenty monthly issues, surviving a prosecution for obscenity and undergoing a significant change of editorship in the wake of that scandal. Its purpose was to create a forum for discourse on "tabooed topics:" its editor, the Legitimation League's Honorable Secretary George Bedborough, wrote in the first issue that the journal's pages would "be open for the discussion of important phases of sex questions which are almost universally ignored elsewhere." The Rare Book and Manuscript Library holds a full run of the journal.

Held at: University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts [Contact Us]

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