Obscenity regulation, New York City, and the creation of American erotica, 1820--1880

This dissertation examines the emergence of prohibitions on obscenity and a domestic trade in erotica in nineteenth-century America. It is both a legal history of obscenity regulation and a cultural history of erotic publishing. New York City, which played a pivotal role in both these narratives, provides the focal point. By mid-century, it had become the headquarters for an ambitious network of publishers---men like Frederic Brady, William Haines, and George Akarman---who pioneered commerce in both "fancy" publications that were known to be illicit and "racy" sensation literature that deliberately skirted the boundaries of the obscene.;This study demonstrates that obscenity law shaped markets for erotica, though often by stimulating rather than suppressing the proliferation of sexual writing. Antebellum prosecutions expanded markets by spurring innovative publishers to turn to mail-order erotica, which they viewed as immune from regulation. Obscenity prohibitions also fueled the production of a distinct genre of racy literature, which combined graphic violence and sexual allusiveness as a substitute for overt depictions of sex. And they inspired a new style of transgressive writing, prominently represented by Akarman's Venus' Miscellany, featuring the core of legal constructions of obscenity: female expressions of erotic desire.;This study further shows that the enthusiasm for morals laws in elite legal doctrine has obscured the extent of everyday opposition to morals regulation in nineteenth-century America. Pornographers who confronted obscenity prosecutions provided an important source of resistance. Though they rarely framed challenges in terms of free speech or freedom of the press, they subverted the power of legal prohibitions by defying interdictions on obscenity, continually improvising strategies to circumvent them, and mobilizing property-based arguments against regulation.;Finally, this dissertation explains how producers of erotica shaped the law, especially by generating unprecedented exercises of national police power over morality. In essence, it shows that the Comstock Act of 1873 arose from New York moral reformers' frustration with the ability of Gotham's publishers to outmaneuver local regulation, their hostility to traditional concepts of federalism and local responsibility for morals enforcement, and their desire for a centralized system of moral surveillance for the post-Civil War nation.