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152-535: The Private Case is a collection of erotica and pornography held initially by the British Museum and then, from 1973, by the British Library . The collection began between 1836 and 1870 and grew from the receipt of books from legal deposit , from the acquisition of bequests and, in some cases, from requests made to the police following their seizures of obscene material. From its foundation in

304-521: A striptease . Pirou's film inspired a genre of risqué French films that showed women disrobing, and other filmmakers realized profits could be made from such films. Sexually explicit films opened producers and distributors to be liable for prosecution. Such films were produced illicitly by amateurs, starting in the 1920s, primarily in France and the United States. Processing the film was risky as

456-469: A contest that eventually got labeled as the " Pubic Wars ". "We were the first to show full frontal nudity. The first to expose the clitoris completely. I think we made a very serious contribution to the liberalization of laws and attitudes. HBO would not have gone as far as it does if it was not for us breaking the barriers. Much that has happened now in the Western world with respect to sexual advances

608-566: A god and a goddess), but they are more likely to be associated with Inanna , the Mesopotamian goddess of sex and sacred prostitution . Many sexually explicit images, including models of male and female sexual organs were found in the temple of Inanna at Assur . Depictions of sexual intercourse were not part of the general repertory of ancient Egyptian formal art, but rudimentary sketches of heterosexual intercourse have been found on pottery fragments and in graffiti. The final two thirds of

760-485: A higher risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections (STIs); performers working for pornographic studios undergo regular testing for STIs unlike much of the general public. Comparative studies indicate higher tolerance and consumption of pornography among adults tends to be associated with their greater support for gender equality . Among feminist groups , some seek to abolish pornography believing it to be harmful, while others oppose censorship efforts insisting it

912-836: A limited collection, despite its legal deposit status. The censorship laws of Ireland are such that the library can only acquire pornographic works with permission from the Minister for Justice , and the express permission of the Head Librarian is needed to access the material. There is also the specialist research collection of the Kinsey Institute; the institute's founder Alfred Kinsey , began collecting research material into sexual behaviour, including works of erotica, in 1938. The German National Library at Leipzig segregated works deemed salacious or morally improper from its founding in 1912. The writer Egon Kisch described

1064-586: A medium abound with porn became popular enough that in 1995 Time published a cover story titled "CYBERPORN" with the face of a shocked child as the cover photo. In the Reno v. ACLU (1997) ruling, the US Supreme Court upheld the legality of pornography distribution and consumption by adults over the Internet. The Court noted that government may not reduce the communication between adults to "only what

1216-404: A million and Penthouse about a hundred thousand, many magazines became online publications. As of 2005, the best-selling US adult magazines maintained greater reach compared to most other non-pornographic magazines, and often ranked among top-sellers. Modern-day pornography began to take shape from the mid-1980s when the first desktop computers and public computer networks were released. Since

1368-453: A more plausible depiction of human sexuality than in pornography. Additionally, works considered degrading or exploitative tend to be classified by those who see them as such, as "porn" rather than as "erotica" and consequently, pornography is often described as exploitative or degrading. Many countries have laws banning or at least regulating what is considered pornographic material, a situation that generally does not apply to erotica. For

1520-528: A partner. It has been equated with journalism, as both offer a view into the unknown or the hidden aspects. Pornography use is considered a widespread recreational activity in-line with other digitally mediated activities such as use of social media or video games. Motivations for pornography use may include fantasy , habitual use, mood management , or as part of a relationship. People who regard porn as sex education material were identified as more likely not to use condoms in their own sex life , thereby assuming

1672-535: A picture, video, text, or audio that is intended for sexual arousal . Made for consumption by adults, pornographic depictions have evolved from cave paintings , some forty millennia ago, to modern virtual reality presentations. A general distinction of adults-only sexual content is made-classifying it as pornography or erotica . The oldest artifacts considered pornographic were discovered in Germany in 2008 and are dated to be at least 35,000 years old. Throughout

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1824-443: A picture, video, text, or audio that is primarily intended to assist sexual arousal in the consumer, and is created and commercialized with "the consent of all persons involved". Arousal is considered the primary objective, the raison d'etre a material must fulfill for it to be treated as pornographic. As some people can feel aroused by an image that is not meant for sexual arousal and conversely cannot feel aroused by material that

1976-532: A pornographic photo is dated back to about 1846, described as to depict "a rather solemn man gingerly inserting his penis into the vagina of an equally solemn and middle-aged woman". At one point of time, it was more expensive to purchase an erotic photograph than to hire a prostitute. The Parisian demimonde included Napoleon III 's minister, Charles de Morny , an early patron who delighted in acquiring and displaying erotic photos at large gatherings. Pornographic film production commenced almost immediately after

2128-654: A second-century CE treatise on the art of seduction and sensuality by the Roman poet Ovid ; the artifacts of the Moche people in Peru (100 CE to 800 CE); The Decameron , a collection of short stories, some of which are sexual in nature by the 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio ; and the fifteenth-century Arabic sex manual The Perfumed Garden . A highly developed culture of visual erotica flourished in Japan during

2280-595: A separate publishing and bookselling business. Historians have identified the 18th century as an age of pornographic opulence. Written by anonymous authors, the titles: The Progress of Nature (1744); The History of the Human Heart: or, the Adventures of a Young Gentleman (1749), which had descriptions of female ejaculation ; and The Child of Nature (1774) have been noted as prominent pornographic fictional works from this period. The book Fanny Hill (1748),

2432-531: A serious scholar with a legitimate and reasonable rationale to access the material and not—as one principal librarian described it—involved in "indiscriminate browsing in the field of erotica". Holders of short-term reader's tickets were not allowed access to the Private Case, but those with longer-term tickets could apply in writing to the Principal Keeper to get access. This practice lasted from

2584-403: A spiritual outlook as sexual arousal is believed to indicate the embodying of the divine. "pornography is sometimes characterised as the symptom of a degenerate society, but anyone even noddingly familiar with Greek vases or statues on ancient Hindu temples will know that so-called unnatural sex acts, orgies and all manner of complex liaisons have for millennia past been represented in art for

2736-534: A subsequent decline in the sale of DVDs and adult magazines. Starting in the 21st century, greater access to the Internet and affordable smartphones made pornography more accessible and culturally mainstream. The total number of pornographic websites in 2012 was estimated to be around 25 million comprising 12% of all the websites. About 75 percent of households in the US gained Internet access by 2012. Data from 2015 suggests an increase in pornography consumption over

2888-622: A time period now called the Golden Age of Porn . In 1979, the British Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship better known as the Williams Committee, formed to review the laws concerning obscenity reported that pornography could not be harmful and to think anything else is to see pornography "out of proportion". The committee declared that existing variety of laws in the field should be scrapped and so long as it

3040-694: A topic that is hotly debated. Pornography is often far less regulated than sex work and has fewer legal barriers to production, though it is still a morally controversial profession to some. In the United Kingdom, the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 made the selling of "obscene" materials a statutory offense. This act has been criticized heavily, not just in retrospect, but at the time of enacting. Topics of erotic media have been brought to U.S. state and federal courts for centuries. Some notable cases include People v. Freeman , in which

3192-552: A trade association, the Free Speech Coalition ; a labor union, Adult Performer Advocacy Committee ; and award shows, XBIZ Awards and AVN Awards . From the mid-2010s, unscrupulous pornography such as deepfake pornography and revenge porn have become issues of concern. The word pornography is a conglomerate of two ancient Greek words: πόρνος ( pórnos ) "fornicators", and γράφειν ( gráphein ) "writing, recording, or description". In Greek language,

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3344-415: A woman and as an artist was foundational for modern-day feminist erotic media. A distinction is often made between erotica and pornography , although some viewers may not distinguish between them. A key distinction, some have argued, is that pornography's objective is the graphic depiction of sexually explicit scenes. At the same time, erotica "seeks to tell a story that involves sexual themes" that include

3496-541: A year; while in the next ten months fifteen people were arrested under this law. This was partly due to the efforts of Anthony Comstock , who became a major figure in 1872 and held great power to control sexual related activities of people including the choice of abortion. The Comstock Act of 1873 is the American equivalent of the English Obscene Act. The anti-obscenity bill, drafted by Anthony Comstock,

3648-416: Is Playboy , a men's magazine founded in the 1950s that helped to shape the modern Western perception on sex and sexuality in the media. Pornographic magazines could also include boudoir photography or pin-up models , though pin-up models are not definitively sexual by nature. Erotic film has evolved greatly with modern filmmaking capabilities, including developing a large subgenre of cartoon pornography ,

3800-438: Is benign. A longitudinal study had ascertained that pornography use is not a predictive factor in intimate partner violence . Porn Studies , which began in 2014, is the first international peer-reviewed , academic journal dedicated to critical study of "products and services" deemed pornographic. Pornography is a major influencer of people's perception of sex in the digital age ; numerous pornographic websites rank among

3952-585: Is clearly intended for arousal, the material that can be considered as pornography becomes subjective. Pornography is viewed by historians as a complex cultural formation. Depictions of a sexual nature existed since prehistoric times as seen in Venus figurines and rock art . People across various civilizations created works that depicted explicit sex; these include artifacts, music, poetry, and murals among other things that are often intertwined with religious and supernatural themes. The oldest artifacts, including

4104-518: Is considered "the first original English prose pornography, and the first pornography to use the form of the novel." An erotic literary work by John Cleland , Fanny Hill was first published in England as Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure . The novel has been one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history. The author John Cleland was charged for "corrupting the King's subjects." At around

4256-594: Is credited to Nathaniel Butter in a history of the Fleet newspaper industry. The modern word pornography entered the English language as the more familiar word in 1842 via French " pornographie ," from Greek " pornographos ". The term porn is an abbreviation of pornography. The related term πόρνη ( pórnē ) "prostitute" in Greek , originally meant "bought, purchased" similar to pernanai "to sell", from

4408-447: Is directly due to steps that we took." — Bob Guccione , Penthouse founder in 2004. The tussle between Playboy and Penthouse paled into obscurity when Larry Flynt started Hustler , which became the first magazine to publish labial "pink shots" in 1974. Hustler projected itself as the magazine for the working classes as opposed to the urban centered Playboy and Penthouse. During the same time in 1972, Helen Gurley Brown , editor of

4560-408: Is fit for children". With the introduction of broadband connections , much of the distribution networks of pornography moved online giving consumers anonymous access to a wide range of pornographic material. To have better control over their content on the Internet some professional pornographers maintain their own websites. Danni's Hard Drive started in 1995 by Danni Ashe is considered one of

4712-412: Is from pain." Steinem's argument hinges on the distinction between reciprocity versus domination, as she writes: "Blatant or subtle, pornography involves no equal power or mutuality. In fact, much of the tension and drama comes from the clear idea that one person is dominating the other." Pornography Pornography (colloquially known as porn or porno ) is sexual subject material such as

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4864-410: Is likely that the Private Case collection began as a lockable case, by 1890 the collection had expanded to fill 12 cupboards. The bibliophile Henry Spencer Ashbee made a bequest to the library in 1900 of 15,299 volumes containing 8,764 works, of which 1,379 volumes were classed as erotica. The non-contentious works were entered into the library's general catalogue, and duplicates disposed of. Erotica

5016-414: Is often taboo in modern culture, especially in media. Censorship is an issue often faced by creators of erotic work, be it art, film, or literature. The legality of creating and publishing erotic works differs in different parts of the word, but it is not uncommon to see heavy regulations placed on the publication of erotic or pornographic media. The legality of cartoon pornography or animated erotic films

5168-452: Is one of the most controversial aspects of erotic censorship. This is because of the gray area surrounding the portrayal of animated, fictional minors engaging in erotic or sexual acts. The legality of pornography with non-animated individuals is only slightly more definitive. Legal and moral issues regarding pornography and erotica can tie into arguments regarding the legalization or decriminalization of prostitution and sex work at large,

5320-490: Is part of the machine. It keeps you happy. It keeps you running." — Andy Warhol Film scholar Linda Williams remarked that prurience "is a key term in any discussion of moving-image sex since the sixties. Often it is the "interest" to which no one wants to own up". In 1968, the Motion Picture Association of America created a new film ratings system in which any film that was not approved by

5472-576: Is prohibited from children, adults should be free to consume pornography as they see fit. The Meese Report in 1986 argued against loosening restrictions on pornography in the US. The report was criticized as biased, inaccurate, and not credible. In 1988, the Supreme Court of California ruled in the People v. Freeman case that "filming sexual activity for sale" does not amount to procuring or prostitution and shall be given protection under

5624-602: Is the first international peer-reviewed , academic journal that is exclusively dedicated to the critical study of the "products and services" identified to constitute pornography. Adult content is generally classified as either pornography or erotica . Considerations of distinctness between pornography and erotica is mostly subjective. Pornographic content is categorized as softcore or hardcore. Softcore pornography contains depictions of nudity but without explicit depiction of sexual activity. Hardcore pornography includes explicit depiction of sexual activity. Hardcore porn

5776-518: The Cosmopolitan magazine, published a centerfold that featured actor Burt Reynolds in nude. His popular pose has been later emulated by many other famous people. The success of Cosmo led to the launch of Playgirl in 1973. At their peak, Playboy sold close to six million copies a month in the US, while Penthouse nearly five million. In the 2010s, as the market for printed versions of pornographic magazines declined, with Playboy selling about

5928-571: The French Revolution (1789–99). Apart from the sexual component, pornography became a popular medium for protest against the social and political norms of the time. Pornography during this period was used to explore the ideas of sexual freedom for women and men, the various methods of contraception, and to expose the offenses of powerful royals and elites. The working and lower classes in France produced pornographic material en masse with themes of impotency, incest, and orgies that ridiculed

6080-451: The Golden globes and Oscars , are the two prominent award shows of the adult entertainment industry. Free Speech Coalition (FSC) is a trade association and Adult Performer Advocacy Committee (APAC) is a labor union for the adult entertainment industry based in the US. The scholarly study of pornography notably in cultural studies is limited. Porn Studies , which began in 2014,

6232-498: The Guildhall Library , London. Among the 33 works they received were Sodome (1888) and Gomorrhe (1889) by Henri d'Argis; Odor di Femina (1919) by Edmond Dumoulin; and Ma Vie secrète (1923). The last of these was a French translation of the English novel My Secret Life , possibly written by Ashbee or William Haywood . In 1946 the anthropologist Eric Dingwall was appointed honorary assistant keeper to

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6384-590: The Turin Erotic Papyrus (Papyrus 55001), an Egyptian papyrus scroll discovered at Deir el-Medina , consists of a series of twelve vignettes showing men and women in various sexual positions . The scroll was probably painted in the Ramesside period (1292–1075 BCE) and its high artistic quality indicates that it was produced for a wealthy audience. No other similar scrolls have yet been discovered. Archaeologist Nikolaos Stampolidis had noted that

6536-498: The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of an adult to possess obscene material in private. Subsequently, however, the Supreme Court rejected the claim that under Stanley there is a constitutional right to provide obscene material for private use or to acquire it for private use. The right to possess obscene material does not imply the right to provide or acquire it, because the right to possess it "reflects no more than ...

6688-898: The University of Oxford classifies their collection as Φ ( Phi )—a joke that a reader viewing the material may exclaim " Fie! " The tower of Cambridge University Library was rumoured to store a collection of pornographic materials, but they hold only a small collection of such works. These were once held in the collection named the "Arc"—from the Latin Arcana , or "secret things"—and by 2015 this amounted to 1,200 works of 1,000 titles, mostly "libellous works and graphic pictorial works". The Widener Library at Harvard University used to class its pornographic holdings as "Inferno"—which it later shorted to "I°". The Yale University Library classified "obscene" and other limited-access holdings as " Zeta ". The library at Trinity College Dublin has

6840-598: The Venus of Hohle Fels , which is considered to be borderline pornographic, were discovered in 2008 CE at a cave near Stuttgart in Germany, radiocarbon dating suggests they are at least 35,000 years old, from the Aurignacian period. Vast number of artifacts discovered in ancient Mesopotamia region had explicit depictions of heterosexual sex. Glyptic art from the Sumerian Early Dynastic Period frequently showed scenes of frontal sex in

6992-480: The World Wide Web became popular with the introduction of Netscape navigator in 1994. This development led to newer methods of pornography distribution and consumption. The Internet turned out to be a popular source for pornography and was called the "Triple A-Engine" for offering consumers "anonymity, affordability, and accessibility", while driving the business of pornography. The notion of Internet being

7144-470: The World Wide Web in the late 20th century led to global growth in the pornography business. Beginning in the 21st century, greater access to the Internet and affordable smartphones made pornography more mainstream. Pornography has been vouched to provision a safe outlet for sexual desires that may not be satisfied within relationships and be a facilitator of sexual fulfillment in people who do not have

7296-881: The antiquarian book trade, pornographic works are often listed under "curiosa", "erotica" or " facetiae ". Erotica exists in many different forms, both modern and ancient. Erotic art dates back to the Paleolithic times, with cave paintings and carvings of female genitalia being a point of immense interest to prehistorians. Ancient Greek and Roman art depicted erotic acts or figures, often using phallic or erotic imagery to convey ideas of fertility. Modern depictions of erotic art are often intertwined with erotic photography , including boudoir photography , and erotic film . Discussions of modern erotic art are also often merged with discussions on pornography . More specifically, erotic photography found its mass-market roots in pornographic magazines . The most iconic of these magazines

7448-614: The first amendment . This ruling effectively legalized the production of X-rated adult content in the Los Angeles county , which by 2005 had emerged as the largest center in the world for the production of pornographic films. Pornographic films appeared throughout the twentieth century. First as stag films (1900–1940s), then as porn loops or short films for peep shows (1960s), followed by as feature films for theatrical release in adult movie theaters (1970s), and as home videos (1980s). Pornographic magazines published during

7600-399: The history of erotic depictions , various people made attempts to suppress them under obscenity laws, censor , or make them illegal. Such grounds and even the definition of pornography have differed in various historical, cultural, and national contexts. The Indian Sanskrit text Kama Sutra (3rd century CE) contained prose, poetry, and illustrations regarding sexual behavior, and the book

7752-424: The proto-Indo-European root per- , "to hand over" — alluding to act of selling. The word pornography was originally used by classical scholars as "a bookish, and therefore inoffensive term for writing about prostitutes", but its meaning was quickly expanded to include all forms of "objectionable or obscene material in art and literature". In 1864, Webster's Dictionary published "a licentious painting" as

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7904-522: The sex shops of Soho , the centre of London's sex industry , but also sold under the counter by provincial bookdealers. Typically they were handmade—typed texts which were then mimeographed with card covers stapled—and produced in small quantities. Dingwall also donated several works to the museum which he had purchased privately, including 44 works of erotica, mostly in German, which he gave in 1947; these included typewritten and carbon copy works of

8056-443: The top 50 most visited websites worldwide. Called an "erotic engine", pornography has been noted for its key role in the development of various communication and media processing technologies. For being an early adopter of innovations and as a provider of financial capital , the pornography industry has been cited to be a contributing factor in the adoption and popularization of media related technologies. The accurate economic size of

8208-527: The 18th century that the Japanese government began to issue official edicts against them. Even so, Japanese erotica flourished with the works of artists such as Suzuki Harunobu achieving worldwide fame. Japanese censorship laws enacted in 1870 made the production of erotic works difficult. The laws remained in effect until the end of the Pacific War in 1945; nevertheless, pornography flourished through

8360-441: The 1920s from German flagellation clubs . Between 1951 and 1955 he acquired and donated 38 works, including Frank and Ich by Georges Grassal , Nini à Lesbos by Jacques des Linettes and 3 books pederastic in nature. One of the works Dingwall acquired for the museum was a first edition (1749) of Fanny Hill ; Cross describes the book as "of exceptional rarity and historical importance". At his death in 1986, Dingwall bequeathed

8512-465: The 1960s and it was only in 1962 that the library acknowledged that it held a collection of books not included in the main general catalogue. The situation of the segregated books was not discussed more widely until 1963 when there was a debate in the correspondence pages of The Times Literary Supplement about the library's policy. One of those involved in the correspondence was Peter Fryer , who went on to publish Private Case—Public Scandal: Secrets of

8664-407: The 1990s, the Internet has made pornography more accessible and culturally visible. Before the 90s, Usenet newsgroups served as the base for what has been called the "amateur revolution" where non-professionals from the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the help of digital cameras and the Internet, created and distributed their own pornographic content independent of mainstream networks. The use of

8816-457: The Ashbee or Dawes collections", although it "provided the Private Case with a valuable cross-section of English erotica published on the continent". Until the 1960s the procedure to obtain access to Private Case material was exacting; the historian Alison Moore described it as "particularly labyrinthine". The segregation of the Private Case material from the works in the general catalogue included

8968-726: The British Library several works, including de Sade's La philosophie dans le boudoir (1795) and Le roman de Violette (1870), as well as several bibliographies of erotica. In 1964 the British Museum Library received a bequest of 246 works of erotic literature from Charles Reginald Dawes ; according to Cross, writing in 1991, "many scholars now consider to be of more importance than the Ashbee erotica collection". The Dawes bequest included four editions of Fanny Hill ; The Memoirs of Dolly Morton ; five editions of works by de Sade; and Teleny, or The Reverse of

9120-844: The British Library's collection—the National Central Library and the National Lending Library for Science and Technology. The library later also incorporated the holdings of the British National Bibliography , the Office for Scientific and Technical Information, the India Office Library and Records and the British Institute of Recorded Sound . The British Library is one of six legal deposit libraries in

9272-512: The British Library, while noting that nearly all the contents were "produced by heterosexual men for heterosexual men", describes the works as a "unique insight into historic attitudes towards gender, sexuality and obscenity". In 1913 the Bibliothèque nationale de France published a bibliography of its Collection de l'Enfer —the French equivalent of the Private Case. The move induced

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9424-400: The British Museum Library. Other inclusions were some issues of The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine —although most of the issues remained on in the general collection—as they contained articles about flogging girls. In 1920 David Lindsay, 27th Earl of Crawford , a trustee of the museum, bequeathed over 200 works of erotica to the museum "for preservation or destruction at the discretion of

9576-723: The British Museum Revealed in 1966; the book was part of what Harris calls Fryer's "courteous but persistent campaign on the subject". Kearney catalogued the Private Case collection and published The Private Case: An Annotated Bibliography of the Private Case Erotica Collection in the British (Museum) Library in 1981, following seven years of research. It contains 1,920 items, although the material contains flaws. The historian A. S. G. Edwards , in an article for The Book Collector , calls

9728-487: The British Museum; much of this went into the museum's Secretum —their room for items deemed obscene—with the printed matter going into the Private Case. One of the works was Des divinités génératrices, ou, Du culte du phallus (1805) which was, like many of his works, personally monogrammed. By 1885 the catalogue for the Private Case had changed, with 108 former entries removed and 49 new works added. Although it

9880-523: The Comstock act. The laws regarding pornography have differed in various historical, cultural, and national contexts. The English Act did not apply to Scotland where the common law continued to apply. Before the English Act, publication of obscene material was treated as a common law misdemeanor, this made effectively prosecuting authors and publishers difficult even in cases where the material

10032-465: The English novelist John Cleland , and the works of the French eroticist the Marquis de Sade . Also included in his bequest were three volumes of bibliographies of erotica he compiled; titled Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1877), Centuria Librorum Absconditorum (1879) and Catena Librorum Tacendorum (1885), Ashbee published them under the pseudonym Pisanus Fraxi. In the early 20th century,

10184-505: The Frutex Vulvaria (1741) by Philogynes Clitorides; Teague-root Display'd (1746) by Paddy Strong-Cock; Matrimonial Ceremonies Display'd (1748); Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies (1788–1790); The Cuckold's Chronicle (1793); and Paradise Lost; or The Great Dragon Cast Out (1838) by Lucian Redivivus. Some publishers of pornographic material did not forward their works to the British Museum Library. A boom in pornography

10336-531: The Internet led to a decline in the production of AVs. Other forms of adult entertainment such as hentai , which refers to pornographic manga and anime , and erotic video games have become popular in recent decades. In Europe, the Italian Renaissance work from the 16th century - I Modi ( The Ways ) also known as The Sixteen Pleasures became famous for its engravings that explicitly depicted sex positions . The publication of this book

10488-542: The Medal , an early work of gay erotic fiction, published anonymously but speculatively attributed—in part at least—to Oscar Wilde . Also included was Dawes's copy of My Secret Life (1889–1895), an 11-volume first edition, which was one of the 25 copies printed. Dawes had much of his collection bound in Morocco leather or calfskin , and included his book-plate . In 1964 the collector Beecher Moore gave his collection to

10640-475: The National Library, we have a duty to collect any material which will serve for study and research and we already possess a collection of material of the kind you describe in your letter, kept under conditions of special security. Among the items given over were twenty-one "Soho typescripts", also known as "Soho bibles". These were pornographic books published in the 1950s and 1960s and associated with

10792-643: The Suppression of Vice . The act passed by the British Parliament in 1857 applied to the United Kingdom and Ireland . The act made the sale of obscene material a statutory offense, and gave the authorities the power to seize and destroy any material which they considered as obscene. For centuries before, sexually explicit material was considered a domain that is exclusive to aristocratic classes. When pornographic material flourished in

10944-572: The Trustees". The library destroyed the duplicated books and the remainder went into the Private Case. In around 1934 the bibliophile and collector Alfred Rose was given permission to copy the internal catalogue of the Private Case. He took details of the titles present in the case and also included the works of other collections of erotica in major libraries. Rose published the book under the pseudonym Rolf S. Reade, an anagram of his name. Titled Registrum Librorum Eroticorum , it lists 5,061 works. By

11096-631: The UK and Ireland, and the only one to have a right to automatically receive a copy of every printed work published in the UK. In addition to books, this includes pamphlets, magazines, newspapers, sheet music and maps. Certain digital material is also collected under legal deposit, including some websites, e-journals and CD-ROMs . As a legal deposit organisation the works they receive include pornographic or salacious material, seditious publications, those subversive of religion and works that are potentially libellous . Historically, such works have been accepted by

11248-476: The UK started his publication Penthouse , and published its first American issue in 1969 as a direct competitor to Playboy. In its early days, the images of naked women published in Playboy did not show any pubic hair or genitals. Penthouse became the first magazine to show pubic hair in 1970. Playboy followed the lead and there ensued a competition between the two magazines over publication of more racy pictures,

11400-602: The Victorian era that included fetish and taboo themes such as sadomasochism and 'cross-generational sex' are: My Secret Life (1888–1894) and Forbidden Fruit (1898). On accusations of obscenity many of these works had been outlawed until the 1960s. The world's first law that criminalized pornography was the English Obscene Publications Act 1857 , enacted at the urging of the Society for

11552-515: The Victorian-era England, the affluent classes believed they are sensible enough to deal with it, unlike the lower working classes whom they thought would get distracted by such material and cease to be productive. Beliefs that masturbation would make people ill, insane, or become blind also flourished. The obscenity act gave government officials the power to interfere in the private lives of people unlike any other law before. Some of

11704-424: The anti-pornography activist Andrea Dworkin , "Erotica is simply high-class pornography; better produced, better conceived, better executed, better packaged, designed for a better class of consumer." Feminist writer Gloria Steinem distinguishes erotica from pornography, writing: "Erotica is as different from pornography as love is from rape, as dignity is from humiliation, as partnership is from slavery, as pleasure

11856-482: The association was released with an "X" rating. When pornographers began to release their productions with the rating X, the association adopted NC-17 rating for adults only films, leaving the X rating to pornography. Later the invented gimmick rating "XXX" became a standard for pornographic material. In 1970, the United States President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography , set up to study

12008-553: The authority of the Church-State, aristocrats, priests, monks, and other royalty. One of the most important authors of socially radical pornography was the French aristocrat Marquis de Sade (1740–1814), whose name helped derive the words "sadism" and "sadist". He advocated libertine sexuality and published writings that were critical of authorities, many of which contained pornographic content. His work Justine (1791) interlaced orgiastic scenes along with extensive debates on

12160-461: The basement. By 1913 the Private Case contained not just works of pornography or erotica, but serious works on sex, including the six-volume work Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1897–1910) by Havelock Ellis and Edward Carpenter 's The Intermediate Sex (1908); the latter was available in the general catalogues of several academic and public libraries, but confined to the Private Case in

12312-428: The bibliography "of very limited usefulness", given that the book only details the works that were in the Private Case at the time of Kearney's research, and not the many items that had previously been in the case but had since been reclassified. Edwards also highlights flaws in attribution of some publications to anonymously produced books; in this way, Edwards says, it is "very hard for the user of this work to be sure of

12464-558: The collection grew to 78 items. The collection included several works published pseudonymously, as was common at the time. These included works such as The Crafty Whore (1658) by the Italian author Pietro Aretino (translated by Richard Head from the original Italian); The Whore's Rhetorick (1683) by Philp-Puttanus (a pseudonym of the Italian writer Ferrante Pallavicino ); A New Description of Merryland (1741) by Roger Pheuquewell (a pseudonym of Thomas Stretzer); The Natural History of

12616-490: The collection in 1925 as die Giftschränke (the poison cabinets). The segregation of works has now been mostly lifted, although it continues only for explicitly illegal material, such as child pornography , Holocaust denial or serious copyright infringement . There is dispute on whether the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana also holds an extensive pornography or erotica collection. Although

12768-658: The collection of the physician and collector Sir Hans Sloane and the Cotton library , assembled by the antiquarian Sir Robert Cotton ; the Harleian Library , the collection of the Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer . The British Library Act 1972 created the British Library on 1 July 1973. Into the new body were combined the library holdings of the British Museum—which provided most of

12920-554: The collection they obtained comprised French limited editions , although it also included erotica in English from the 1950s and 1960s. Some of the English works of pornography were deemed "duplicated material" and were turned down by the Keeper of Printed Books for inclusion into the library collection on the basis that "we are, after all, a library, not an institute of sexual research". The historian and bibliophile Patrick J. Kearney described Moore's collection as "not so rich in rarities as

13072-468: The department of printed books of the British Museum, where he curated the Private Case. In 1967 he negotiated with the police to obtain what was described as "44 magazines and 15 other articles" they had seized in a raid in Brighton , East Sussex . When the police asked if the museum had particular authority to obtain the material, J. L. Wood, the assistant keeper of printed books, informed them that: as

13224-509: The dividing line between hard fact and authorial conjecture". The British Library is not the only research library that holds large amounts of pornography in its collections. The Bibliothèque nationale de France contains the Collection de l'Enfer , and the Library of Congress houses the Δ ( Delta ) collection (merged into the general collection in 1964). The Bodleian Library at

13376-703: The earliest online pornographic websites, coded by Ashe – a former stripper and nude model, the website was reported by CNN to had generated revenues of $ 6.5 million by 2000. According to some leading pornography providers on the Internet, customer subscription rates for a website would be about one in a thousand people who visit the site for a monthly fees averaging around $ 20. Ashe said in an interview that her website employs 45 people and she expects to earn $ 8 million in 2001 alone. The total number of pornographic websites in 2000 were estimated to be more than 60,000. The development of streaming sites, peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) networks, and tube sites led to

13528-515: The early modern era. From at least the 17th century, erotic artworks became part of the mainstream social culture. Depictions of sexual intercourse were often presented on pictures that were meant to provide sex education for medical professionals, courtesans, and married couples. Makura-e (pillow pictures) were made for entertainment as well as for the guidance of married couples. The ninth-century Japanese art form " Shunga " that depicted sexual acts on woodblock prints and paintings became so popular by

13680-488: The effects of pornography, reported that there was "no evidence to date that exposure to explicit sexual materials plays a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal behavior among youths or adults". The report further recommended against placing any restriction on the access of pornography by adults and suggested that legislation "should not seek to interfere with the right of adults who wish to do so to read, obtain, or view explicit sexual materials". Regarding

13832-424: The eighteenth century, the British Museum acted as the national library of Britain. It was one of six legal deposit libraries in automatic receipt of all works published in the UK; this included pornographic or salacious material, seditious publications, those subversive of religion and works that could later be deemed by the courts as libellous . From the nineteenth century, the subversive and libellous material

13984-497: The figures of 25,000 volumes and 100,000 prints and drawings have been put forward, Legman describes this as a "legend" and the historian H. Paul Jeffers calls it "a persistent and false belief". Erotica The term erotica is derived from the feminine form of the ancient Greek adjective: ἐρωτικός ( erōtikós ), from ἔρως ( érōs )—words used to indicate lust , and sexual love . Curiosa are curiosities or rarities, especially unusual or erotic books. In

14136-473: The first country that legalized pornography, including child pornography , which was later prohibited in 1980. The 1969 legislation, instead of resulting in a decline in pornography production, led to an explosion of investment in, and commercial production of pornography in Denmark, which made the country's name synonymous with sex and pornography. The total retail turnover of pornography in Denmark for

14288-455: The general catalogue. There is no restriction on access to the Private Case material, except for some items which are in a fragile condition. At its largest, the collection comprised some 4,000 works; as at 2023 about 2,500 volumes are still classified by the library as part of the Private Case. The British Museum Act created the British Museum in June 1753. The Act provided for the purchase of

14440-504: The general collection, and growing when the library received bequests and donations from collectors. Some of these were large: the book collector Henry Spencer Ashbee 's 1900 bequest contained 1,379 volumes of erotica; the anthropologist Eric Dingwall —an honorary assistant keeper to the department of printed books—donated several works during his lifetime and at his death; and in 1964 the bibliophile Charles Reginald Dawes bequeathed 246 works of erotic literature. From 1964—and reflecting

14592-468: The idea of the nude female figure from an object of sexual pleasure to a symbol for a woman's sexual liberation. Martha Edelheit was a pioneer of modern women's erotica, flipping the genre on its head by focusing her art on the nude male figure. It was not unusual for a man to be seen as an object of sexual desire in erotic media, but these portrayals were often found in gay pornography , and were often created or published by another man. Edelheit's work as

14744-617: The ills of property and traditional hierarchy in society. When large-scale archaeological excavations were undertaken in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii during the 18th century, much of the erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum came to light, shocking the authorities who endeavored to hide them away from the general public. In 1821, the moveable objects were locked away in the Secret Museum in Naples , and what could not be removed

14896-415: The inception of the case until the 1960s. With the increasing liberalisation of social mores in the 1960s and the availability of many of the Private Case works in bookshops, in 1964 the library began to liberalise its approach to works in the Private Case, revising the catalogues and moving items to the general catalogue for general access. Because of what Harris calls "the bibliographical complexities" of

15048-401: The increasing liberalisation of social mores of the time—the library began to liberalise its approach to works in the Private Case, revising the collection and moving items onto the general catalogue for general access, a process that was completed in 1983. There have been no new entries in the Private Case since 1990 and all new erotic or pornographic material is openly accessible and listed in

15200-483: The invention of the motion picture in 1895. A pioneer of the motion picture camera, Thomas Edison , released various films, including The Kiss that were denounced as obscene in late 19th century America. Two of the earliest pioneers of pornographic films were Eugène Pirou and Albert Kirchner . Kirchner directed the earliest surviving pornographic film for Pirou under the trade name "Léar". The 1896 film, Le Coucher de la Mariée , showed Louise Willy performing

15352-485: The law's 'solicitude to protect the privacies of the life within [the home]'". In 1969, Blue Movie by Andy Warhol became the first feature film to depict explicit sexual intercourse that received a wide public theatrical release in the United States. Blue Movie was real . But it wasn't done as pornography—it was done as an exercise, an experiment. But I really do think movies should arouse you, should get you excited about people, should be prurient. Prurience

15504-403: The lawyer and writer E. S. P. Haynes to produce "The Taboos of the British Museum Library", an essay in the literary magazine The English Review . Describing the existence of the Private Case as "unsatisfactory", he criticised the museum for censorship and wrote that "the reputation of our National Library is suffering in consequence" of the segregation of books. The library practice of keeping

15656-466: The library as being part of the collection; the library describes the Private Case as "a historical collection". In 2019 the contents of the Private Case were digitised and made available through the Gale subscription database Archives of Sexuality & Gender. Gale describes the Private Case material as "an interesting study in social ethics as the definition of obscenity evolved since the mid-19th century";

15808-543: The library split the segregated books into two collections. They placed the pornography and erotic literature in the Private Case—a lockable cabinet in the library's basement—with the shelf-mark P.C. The libellous and subversive works were given the name the Suppressed Safe collection and the shelf-mark S.S. They were locked in the cupboard of the keeper of printed books until they were moved into seven safes in

15960-441: The library, but some were not released into their general access collections or were not included on the publicly accessible catalogue. As well as the legal deposit works lodged with the library, they would also receive private donations and posthumous bequests from collectors, including those who amassed works of erotica and pornography; these were also accepted, but not put in the general access collection. There are no records in

16112-633: The library. Moore—a friend of Stephen Ward , one of the central figures in the Profumo affair —was investigated by the Metropolitan Police , as many of Ward's friends were. Moore was concerned by the police's comments about his collection; he donated it to the library as quickly as he could. Dingwall negotiated the division of the collection and its exchange between Moore, the museum and the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research . Most of

16264-457: The list of its contents, which meant readers were unaware the library held copies of the works. In the 1960s there were two copies of an official catalogue of the contents, both held by senior members of the library staff. To obtain access to a book, a reader had to write to the library and ask if they had a copy of the work; if this was confirmed, they could ask for access to it. The reader would then be invited for interview to ascertain if they were

16416-512: The male genitalia and in 91 ways the female genitalia. Lysistrata (411 BCE) is a sex-war comedy play performed in ancient Greece . In India, Hinduism embraced an inquisitive attitude towards sex as an art and a spiritual ideal. Some ancient Hindu temples incorporated various aspects of sexuality into their art work. The temples at Khajuraho and Konark are particularly renowned for their sculptures, which had detailed representations of human sexual activity. These depictions were viewed with

16568-546: The meaning for pornography , and the Oxford English Dictionary : "obscene painting" (1842), "description of obscene matters, obscene publication" (1977 or earlier). Definitions for the term "pornography" are varied, with people from both pro- and anti-pornography groups defining it either favorably or unfavorably, thus making any definition very stipulative . Nevertheless, academic researchers have defined pornography as sexual subject material such as

16720-555: The mid-twentieth century have been noted for playing an important role in the sexual revolution and the liberalization of laws and attitudes towards sexual representation in the Western world . Hugh Hefner , in 1953 published the first US issue of the Playboy , a magazine which as Hefner described is a "handbook for the urban male". The magazine contained images of nude women along with articles and interviews covering politics and culture. Twelve years later, in 1965, Bob Guccione in

16872-416: The mid-twentieth century on, societal attitudes towards sexuality became more lenient in the Western world where legal definitions of obscenity were made limited. In 1969, Blue Movie by Andy Warhol became the first film to depict unsimulated sex that received a wide theatrical release in the United States. This was followed by the " Golden Age of Porn " (1969–1984). The introduction of home video and

17024-421: The mid-twentieth century. In the 20th century, a cadre of female artists, authors, and other creatives began to create a new kind of erotica. Women's erotica exists to cater for the sexual gratification of women consuming erotic material. Feminist erotic media often centers female pleasure instead of catering to the male gaze . Feminist erotic art had a boom in the mid-20th century, most iconically transforming

17176-501: The mid-twentieth century. Starting from 1957 to 1997, the US Supreme Court made numerous judgments that redefined obscenity. The nineteenth-century legislation eventually outlawed the publication, retail and trafficking of certain writings and images that were deemed pornographic. Although laws ordered the destruction of shop and warehouse stock meant for sale, the private possession and viewing of (some forms of) pornography

17328-751: The minutes of the British Museum trustees' meetings or within the records of the librarians regarding the opening of the Private Case, and no accurate date when it happened. Philip Harris, a former deputy keeper at the British Museum Library, records that in 1836 the Reverend Henry Baber —when he held the post of Keeper of the Printed Books—reported to a parliamentary select committee that young men should not have access to improper French novels, and that he had locked up such works, particularly those with illustrations, and they would only be released upon application to himself. This, Harris notes,

17480-509: The missionary position. In Mesopotamian votive plaques from the early second millennium ( c.  2000  – c.  1500   BCE ), a man is usually shown penetrating a woman from behind while she bends over drinking beer through a straw. Middle Assyrian lead votive figurines often portrayed a man standing and penetrating a woman as she rests on an altar. Scholars have traditionally interpreted all these depictions as scenes of hieros gamos (an ancient sacred marriage between

17632-540: The most popular form of which is Japanese hentai . Erotic film is the form of erotica most often seen as interchangeable with pornography due to their similarities in form and function. Erotic literature also dates back to ancient times, though not quite as far. Arguably the most iconic erotic piece of literature, the Kama Sutra is a Sanskrit text largely describing and depicting ideas of sex, sexuality, love, and human emotion. Eroticism in ancient Greece and Rome

17784-420: The museum's Department of Asia). There have been no new entries into the Private Case since 1990. All new erotic or pornographic material is openly accessible and listed in the general catalogue, with no restrictions on access, except for some volumes, because of their fragile condition. At its largest, the collection comprised some 4,000 works, although as at 2023 there are about 2,500 volumes still classified by

17936-416: The names of Private Case books off the general catalogue he thought "a ruinous policy, and one which in the long run may prove suicidal. Students will tend to go elsewhere". He also stated that by censoring the existence of works in its holdings, the library "is placing itself in a most dubious position". Despite Haynes's essay the wider public continued to be unaware of the existence of the Private Case until

18088-576: The notion that sexually explicit content is improper, the Commission found it "inappropriate to adjust the level of adult communication to that considered suitable for children". The Supreme Court supported this view. In 1971, Sweden removed its obscenity clause. Further relaxation of legislations during the early 1970s in the US, West Germany and other countries led to rise in pornography production. The 1970s had been described by Linda Williams as 'the "Classical" Era of Theatrically Exhibited Porn',

18240-409: The past few decades which is attributed to the growth of Internet pornography . Technological advancements such as digital cameras , laptops , smartphones, and Wi-Fi have democratized the production and consumption of pornography. Subscription-based service providers such as OnlyFans , founded in 2016, are becoming popular as the platforms for pornography trade in the digital era. Apart from

18392-408: The people suspected for masturbation were forced to wear chastity devices. "Cures" and "treatment" for masturbation involved such measures like giving electric shock and applying carbolic acid to the clitoris. The law was criticized for being established on still yet unproven claims that sexual material is noxious for people or public health. In 1865, the US postal service was seen as a "vehicle" for

18544-504: The pleasure and inspiration of the viewer everywhere. The desire to ponder images of love-making is clearly innate in the human – perhaps particularly the male – psyche." — Tom Hodgkinson Kama , the word used to connote sexual desire, was explored in Indian literary works such as the Kama Sutra , which dealt with the practical as well as the psychological aspects of human courtship and sexual intercourse. The Sanskrit text Kama sutra

18696-529: The popular erotic literary works from the twentieth century include the novels: Story of the Eye (1928), Tropic of Cancer (1934), Tropic of Capricorn (1938), the French Histoire d'O ( Story of O ) (1954); and the short stories: Delta of Venus (1977), and Little Birds (1979). After the invention of photography , the birth of erotic photography followed. The oldest surviving image of

18848-585: The porn industry in the early twenty-first century is unknown. In 2015, estimates of the worldwide market value stood at US$ 97 billion, with the US revenue valued at $ 10 to $ 12 billion. The US revenue was estimated to have reached at least US$ 3.3 billion in 2020. Pornography in Japan was estimated to be worth over $ 20 billion in 2018. The legality of Pornography varies across Countries. The US pornography industry employs numerous performers along with production and support staff, and has its own industry-specific publications: XBIZ and AVN ;

19000-441: The practice of withholding books from circulation. The historian Peter Fryer , in his study of the Private Case, considers the case began in 1856 or later; the cultural critic Gershon Legman estimates that it began operating between 1866 and 1870, based on the dates of the early accessions. According to Cross and Harris, between the late 1830s or early 1840s and 1854 the collection grew to 27 books, then to 60 by 1860 and by 1864

19152-462: The professional pornographers, content creators on such platforms include others like; a physics teacher, a race car driver , a woman undergoing cancer treatment. In 2022, the total pornographic content accessible online was estimated to be over 10,000 terabytes . AVN and XBIZ are the industry-specific organizations based in the US that provide information about the adult entertainment business. XBIZ Awards and AVN Awards , analogous to

19304-507: The publication of written and visual material, which was essentially pornographic began. Heptaméron written in French by Marguerite de Navarre and published posthumously in 1558 is one of the earliest examples of salacious texts from this era. Beginning with the Age of Enlightenment and advances in printing technology, the production of erotic material became popular enough that an underground marketplace for such works developed in England with

19456-479: The sale of "erotic, grotesque, nonsense" (ero-guro-nansensu) periodicals, particularly in the Taishō era (1912–1926). From the 1960s, pink films , which portrayed sexual themes became popular in Japan. In 1981 the first Japanese Adult video (AV) was released. The Japanese pornography industry peaked in the early 2000s when about 30,000 AVs were made a year. From the mid-2010s, increased availability of free porn on

19608-408: The sale of sexual material nevertheless continued through "under the counter" means. Magazines specialising in a genre called "saucy and spicy" became popular during this time (1896 to 1955), titles of few popular magazines include; Wink: A Whirl of Girls , Flirt: A FRESH Magazine , and Snappy . Cover stories in these magazines featured segments such as "perky pin-ups" and "high-heel cuties". Some of

19760-663: The same time, erotic graphic art that began to be extensively produced in Paris came to be known in the Anglosphere as "French postcards". Enlightenment-era France had been noted by historians as the center of origin for modern-era pornography. The works of French pornography, which often concentrated on the education of an ingénue into libertine , dominated the sale of sexually explicit content. The French sought to interlace narratives of sexual pleasure with philosophical and anti-establishment basis. Political pornography began with

19912-462: The society of ancient Greece held lenient attitudes towards sexual representation in the fields of art and literature. The Greek poet Sappho 's Ode to Aphrodite (600 BCE) is considered an earliest example of lesbian poetry. Red-figure pottery invented in Greece (530 BCE) often portrayed images that displayed eroticism . The fifth-century BC comic Aristophanes elaborated 106 ways of describing

20064-451: The state of California upheld that hiring actors to engage in sexual activity for the sake of creating erotic films was not considered pornography, and Miller v. California , in which the idea of erotic work providing serious artistic or literary value was introduced to the legal sphere. A majority of erotica centers women as the object of sexual desire, demonstrated in the sharp rise of popularity of pornographic magazines centering women in

20216-423: The term pornography connotes depiction of sexual activity; no date is known for the first use of the term pornography , the earliest attested, most related word found is πορνογράφος ( pornographos ) i.e. "someone writing about harlots" in the 3rd century CE work Deipnosophists by Athenaeus . The oldest published reference to the word pornography as in 'new pornographie,' is dated back to 1638 and

20368-644: The term " masochism " was derived. The Sins of the Cities of the Plain (1881) is one of the first sole male homosexual literary work published in English, this work is said to have inspired another gay literary work Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal (1893), whose authorship has often been attributed to Oscar Wilde . The Romance of Lust , written anonymously and published in four volumes during 1873–1876, contained graphical descriptions of themes detailing incest, homosexuality, and orgies. Other publications from

20520-588: The time the book was published in 1936, Rose had died. On his death, Rose bequeathed seven works of erotica to the library, including The Bride's Confession (1917); The Festival of the Passions (1863); and The Dialogues of Luisa Sigea (1890) by Nicolas Chorier . According to Cross, the books donated are "of exceptional interest". In 1950 the Private Case was expanded by the receipt of the Eliot–Phelips collection, formed by Edward Phelips, which had been held by

20672-428: The transmission of materials that were deemed obscene by the American lawmakers. An act relating to the postal services was passed, which made people pay a fine of $ 500 for knowingly mailing any "obscene book, pamphlet, picture print, or other publication". From 1865 to up until the first three months of 1872, a total number of nine people were held for various charges of obscenity, with one person sentenced to prison for

20824-492: The undertaking, the process took until 1983. According to Moore around a third of the Private Case was moved onto the general catalogue during the 1970s. In 1973, when the British Museum Library collection was passed to the control of the British Library, the illustrated pillow books in the Private Case, which contained no text, were transferred to the British Museum Department of Oriental Antiquities (now

20976-710: The works published in the Victorian era are considered bold and graphic even by today's lenient standards. The English novel The Adventures, Intrigues, and Amours, of a Lady's Maid! written by anonymous "Herself" (c. 1838) professed the notion that homosexual acts are more pleasurable for women than heterosexuality which is linked to painful and uncomfortable experiences. Some of the popular publications from this era include: The Pearl (magazine of erotic tales and poems published from 1879 to 1881); Gamiani, or Two Nights of Excess (1870) by Alfred de Musset; and Venus in Furs (1870) by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, from whose name

21128-602: The year 1969 was estimated at $ 50 million. Much of the pornographic material produced in Denmark was smuggled into other countries around the world. In the United States, pornography is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution unless it constitutes obscenity or child pornography that is produced with real children. Nevertheless, in Stanley v. Georgia (1969),

21280-535: Was celebrated; while the British English text Fanny Hill (1748), considered "the first original English prose pornography," has been one of the most prosecuted and banned books. In the late 19th century, a film by Thomas Edison that depicted a kiss was denounced as obscene in the United States, whereas Eugène Pirou 's 1896 film Bedtime for the Bride was received very favorably in France. Starting from

21432-575: Was clearly intended as pornography. However, neither the English, nor the United States Act defined what constituted "obscene", leaving this for the courts to determine. For implementing the Comstock act, the US courts used the British Hicklin test to define obscenity, the definition of which was first proposed in 1868, ten years after the passing of the English obscene act. The definition became cemented in 1896 and continued until

21584-453: Was compiled by the sage Vatsyayana into its final form sometime during the second half of the third century CE. This text, which included prose, poetry, as well as illustrations regarding erotic love and sexual behavior, is one of the most celebrated Indian erotic works. Koka shastra is another medieval Indian work that explored kama. Other examples of early art and literature of sexual nature include: Ars Amatoria (Art of Love) ,

21736-510: Was considered the beginning of print pornography in Rome . The second edition of this book was published in 1527, titled Aretino Postures , which combined erotic images with text - a first in the Western culture . The Vatican called for the complete destruction of all the copies of the book and imprisonment of its author Marcantonio Raimondi . With the development of printing press in Europe,

21888-604: Was debated for less than an hour in the US Congress before being passed into law. Apart from the power to seize and destroy any material alleged to be obscene, the law made it possible for the authorities to make arrests over any perceived act of obscenity, which included possession of contraceptives by married couples. Reportedly in the US, 15 tons of books and 4 million pictures were destroyed, and about 15 people were driven to suicide with 4,000 arrests. At least 55 people whom Comstock identified as abortionists got indicted under

22040-586: Was either covered or cordoned off from public view. During the Victorian era (1837–1901), the invention of the rotary printing press made publication of books easier, many works of lascivious nature were published during this period often under pen names or anonymity. In 1837, the Holywell Street (known as "Booksellers' Row") in London had more than 50 shops that sold pornographic material. Many of

22192-594: Was not contained to only visual art, as poets such as the Greek Sappho and the Roman Catullus and Ovid wrote erotic verse and lyrical poems. Modern erotic literature, often called 'smut', is quite popular, especially among women. In the 21st century, fan fiction erotica has gained popularity. Stories on online websites like Archive of Our Own and FanFiction.Net account for a large percentage of modern erotic fan fiction literature. The topic of sex

22344-526: Was not made an offense until the twentieth century. Historians have explored the role of pornography in determining social norms . The Victorian attitude that pornography was only for a select few is seen in the wording of the Hicklin test , stemming from a court case in 1868, where it asked: "whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences". Although officially prohibited,

22496-514: Was put into the Private Case; any duplicated works were destroyed. The remaining works included Le Caleçon des coquettes du jour (1763); La Masturbomanie ou jouissance solitaire (1830); Anandria, ou Confessions de Mademoiselle Sapho, avec la clef (1866) by "la citoyenne Raucourt"; Das Kind der Lust, oder die Freuden des Genusses (1873); The Romance of Lust (1873–1876); La Joie du pornographe; ou, Nouveau recueil d'amusemens (1884); as well as several editions of Fanny Hill by

22648-432: Was seen in the 1850s, much of it generated from the publishing houses in Holywell Street, London , which were known for their output of pornographic books. Some pornographic publishers, such as William Dugdale , never sent their works to the library, which meant they had to be acquired later by the library either through purchase or from a donation. In 1865 the antiquarian George Witt gifted his phallicism collection to

22800-400: Was separated into the Suppressed Safe collection while the erotica and pornography were placed in a locked cupboard known as the Private Case. Access to the material was restricted, and the catalogue of Private Case publications was not released to the library's general readership. The contents of the Private Case collection changed over time, shrinking as works were declassified and put into

22952-410: Was the beginning of what became the Private Case. Paul Cross, a member of staff of the British Library, puts the date of the case's opening at approximately 1841, while the library was under the leadership of Sir Henry Ellis and Anthony Panizzi was the Keeper of Printed Books. The process was continued by Panizzi's successor John Winter Jones , who did not inform the library's trustees or officials of

23104-461: Was their distribution, which was strictly private. In the Western world , during the 1960s, social attitudes towards sex and pornography slowly changed. In 1967, Denmark repealed the obscenity laws on literature; this led to a decline in the sale of pornographic and erotic literature. Hoping for a similar effect, in the summer of 1969, legislators in Denmark abolished censorship on picture pornography, thereby effectively becoming, from July 1, 1969,

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