Reading between the lines of Victorian-era pornography

WHITEHORSE – Justin O’Hearn studies pornography. This is not altogether surprising, porn is a multi-billion dollar industry and a growing number of writers, commentators and researchers are studying both the business and its effect on society.

What is surprising is that, in an age where ubiquitous internet access provides a gateway to massive amounts of adult content, O’Hearn has chosen to study some of the rarest, hardest to access, non-digital pornography in the western world.

“A class at Simon Fraser University introduced me to the subject of censorship and the ‘Paris edition’, which was late nineteenth and early twentieth century code for an uncensored, illicit book,” said O’Hearn, a University of British Columbia doctoral student and English instructor at Yukon College.

Part of the class focused on a particular ‘Paris edition’, Teleny, a pornographic novel published anonymously in 1893, but reputed to have been written in part by Oscar Wilde. As a fan of Victorian literature, and Wilde in particular, O’Hearn was intrigued.

“The mainstream authors of the Victorian era, such as Dickens, Hardy, etcetera are still important, but have been studied almost to death. There is this whole body of pornographic literature, however, that has been locked away and not studied very robustly at all.”
According to O’Hearn, this research subject offers a fascinating peek under the strict moral veneer of Victorian life and into the hypocrisy that lay beneath.

“Much of the text itself is poorly written, repetitive, boring stuff, but some of it reveals contemporary reactions to scandals, both sexual and political, and the lives of homosexuals or other marginalized groups.”

Stories of cross-dressing and trans-gendered men and women, exotic tales from distant lands and cultures, sexual relationships between those of different classes and even some medical texts, were all censored – deemed by legislators as morally unsafe for women, children, and the lower classes.

“The Obscene Publications Acts (1857) of the time were quite vague. So the courts took a ‘we know it when we see it’ approach to censorship and prosecution, defining obscenity as that ‘which tends to deprave and corrupt’. This form of censorship was ultimately class-based and rooted in Christian morality, resulting in moral panic.”

Illicit texts from the height of the clandestine book trade, between 1870 and 1895, ranged from penny pamphlets to leather-bound special editions that would sell for upwards of £100.00 (which is over £10,000 or $18,000 in 2013 currency values). Customers could obtain texts by patronizing specific bookshops or via mail order, if they knew where to look. Wealthy individuals amassed huge collections of illicit books during this time and some, such as the one owned by Henry Spencer Ashbee, later made their way into the British Library.

Ashbee, who died in 1900, also owned texts by Cervantes, including a very rare edition of Don Quixote. The British Library desperately wanted these, but had to agree to take the pornography as stipulated in Ashbee’s will.

“The British Library didn’t want this stuff and after being forced to take it, they destroyed much of it, locking the remainder away for decades, not even admitting that it existed let alone including it in their catalogue.”

By the mid twentieth century, only a handful of academic researchers had been granted access to the collection. O’Hearn has accessed parts of it for his own research.

“A facsimile of the text is one thing, but to experience the physicality of the book itself - how carefully (or not) it was crafted, the quality of the paper, the hand-written annotations and the secret codes contained in the advertisements at the back, is to discover clues as to who it was made for and which circles it traveled in.”

Now, alongside his doctoral research, he is bringing some of this material back into the light.

Last year saw the first publication of the 1883 novel Letters from Laura and Eveline in 110 years. Transcribed, edited, and with an introduction by O’Hearn, this story of two intersex people describing activities on their wedding nights offers fascinating depictions of various Victorian subcultures via small clues throughout the text.

It remains to be seen if contemporary western society is more prepared to accept such writing than our Victorian predecessors. O’Hearn is hopeful that such texts will become more important to our understanding of that time.

“While these texts certainly contain descriptions of sex, my hope is that people can see them for what they are - depictions of transgression that tell us something about the history of sexuality, gender, identity, authority, censorship, erotica, and ultimately, publishing - providing valuable insight into the era in which it was published.”

O’Hearn will present his research in the talk, Sins Between the Pages: Victorian Era Pornography and its Social Effects, taking place on Wednesday, February 12, from 12-1 p.m. in room A2206 (the lecture hall) at Yukon College’s Ayamdigut Campus. For more information please visit www.yukoncollege.yk.ca/brownbag/.

The Yukon College Brown Bag Lunch Speaker Series is broadcast online. Please email bbl@yukoncollege.yk.ca to receive a web link to the live presentation. O’Hearn also shares information about his research and the doctoral process via his website www.graduable.com.