San Francisco Public Library

Dirty works, obscenity on trial in America's first sexual revolution, Brett Gary

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Dirty works

bibliography

1224044805

Brett Gary

obscenity on trial in America's first sexual revolution

"This book focuses on a series of courtroom cases that were all represented by the same lawyer: Morris L. Ernst. Ernst's clients included European and American literati and sexual activists, among them Margaret Sanger, James Joyce, and Alfred Kinsey. They, along with a cast of burlesque theater owners and bookstore clerks, had run afoul of strict obscenity laws, and became actors in Ernst's legal theater that ultimately forced the law to recognize people's right to freely consume media. In this book, Brett Gary recovers the critically neglected Ernst as the most important legal defender of literary expression and reproductive rights by the mid-twentieth century. Each chapter centers on one or more key trials from Ernst's career battling censorship and obscenity laws, using them to tell a broader story of cultural changes and conflicts around sex, morality, and free speech ideals. These trials sets the stage, legally and culturally, for the sexual revolution of the 1960s and beyond. In the latter half of the century, the courts had a powerful body of precedents, many owing to Ernst's courtroom successes, that recognized adult interests in sexuality, women's needs for reproductive control, and the legitimacy of sexual inquiry."--, Provided by the publisher

Moral guardians and sexual modernists -- Fighting for sexual education : Mary Ware Dennett vs. postal power -- Women's right to sexual pleasure : Marie Stopes vs. Customs Authority -- The taboo of inversion : Radclyffe Hall and literary censorship -- The vomit school of literature : fighting censorship in NYC -- Defending literary genius : James Joyce's Ulysses on trial -- Battles for birth control : Margaret Sanger and the moral authority of doctors -- The allure of the erotic : Alfred Kinsey and sexual science, 1947-1957 -- From the first to the second sexual revolution -- Morris Ernst's complicated legacy

adult