precursors

This page considers adult content production, distribution and consumption before the advent of the net.

It covers -

• introduction
• demand
• supply
• regulation
• studies

     introduction

Irrespective of debate about the effects of adult content or the morality of its consumption and production it is clear that erotica - stigmatised or otherwise - has been a feature of most (if not all societies) in over the past two millennia.

What we might now characterise as 'adult content' was consumed in the form of literature (oral and textual) and graphical representations (drawings, etchings, woodcuts, oil paintings, manuscript illumination, postcards, sculpture, weaving and embroideries). That consumption was not restricted to urban elites. although the wealthier often had readier access to content and the ability to subvert restrictions on dissemination and consumption. Human appetites are more democratic than claimed by some moralists; satisfaction of those appetites has not been restricted to men, the literate or the sedentary.

The years before the advent of the net (and of publications such as Playboy) thus saw markets for bawdy verse and woodcuts, millions of 'dirty postcards', books of 'forbidden literature' and dissemination of what would now be characterised as 'sex toys'. There are substantial continuities in the demand for adult content and in its satisfaction, along with the continuities in censorship law and implementation highlighted in the Censorship guide elsewhere on this site.

Contemporary adult content production is deeply rooted in historical practice, an heir of commercial and non-commercial activity since before the industrial revolution of the steam age.

     demand

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     supply

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     regulation

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     studies

For insights into the history of stigmatised literature see The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity & the Origins of Modernity, 1500-1800 (New York: Zone 1993) edited by Lynn Hunt, Jean Goulemot's Forbidden Texts: Erotic Literature & Its Readers in 18th Century France (Philadelphia: Uni of Pennsylvania Press 1994), Elizabeth Eisenstein's Grub Street Abroad: Aspects of the French Cosmopolitan Press from the Age of Louis XIV to the French Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1992), Peter Wagner's Eros Revived: Erotica of the Enlightenment in England and America (London: Secker & Warburg 1988), Julie Peakman's Mighty Lewd Books: The Development of Pornography in Eighteenth Century England (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2003), Edward de Grazia's Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity & the Assault on Genius (New York: Random 1992) and Peter Mendes' Clandestine Erotic Fiction in English 1800-1930 (Aldershot: Scolar Press 1993).

For graphics see The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity & Sexuality (London: Routledge 1992) by Lynda Nead, Alison Carroll's A History of Moral Censorship & the Visual Arts in Australia (Melbourne: ACCA 1989), Lisa Sigel's Governing Pleasures: Pornography & Social Change in England, 1815-1914 (New Brunswick: Rutgers Uni Press 2002), Victorian Erotic Photography (New York: St Martins Press 1973) edited by Peter Mendes & Graham Ovenden, Tijuana Bibles: Art & Wit in America's Forbidden Funnies, 1930S-1950s (New York: Simon & Schuster 1997) by Bob Adelman.

Perspectives on regulatory crusades are provided in Paul Boyer's Purity In Print (New York: Scribners 1968), Nicola Beisel's Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock & Family Reproduction in Victorian America (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 1997), Walter Kendrick's The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1996).

Is there an afterlife for 'historic' erotica and other products.

Offline collecting is profiled in Sex Collectors: The Secret World of Consumers, Connoisseurs, Curators, Creators, Dealers, Bibliographers & Accumulators of 'Erotica' (New York: Simon & Schuster 2006) by Geoff Nicholson. Writing can be explored in the two volume Encyclopedia Of Erotic Literature (London: Routledge 2007) edited by Gaetan Brulotte and John Phillips.

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