Clandestine Erotic Fiction in English 1800–1930

A Bibliographical Study

Peter Mendes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781351951074
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This work offers bibliographical descriptions of all printings of erotic fiction in English issued clandestinely during the period 1800-1930. By 'clandestine' is meant books whose publishers and printers attempt to hide their identities, usually by offering title pages whose misleading places and dates of publication may shock and amuse, but which always aim to mystify. Using internal and external evidence, an attempt is made to establish who were the printers, booksellers and publishers, English and Continental, involved in this trade. The printing families or 'groups' into which a large percentage of the material falls are classified, accompanied by illustrations which identify the main printing characteristics ('house styles') of the groups. Bibliographical descriptions follow a checklist of clandestine catalogues; these provide valuable evidence for dating, pricing and 'sales pitch' and information on items of which no copies can now be traced. The work concludes with a series of appendices which provide significant external evidence, and three indexes: of themes, titles and names. Peter Mendes' original research builds on and significantly extends the essential pioneer work of the Victorian collector and bibliographer H.S. Ashbee ('Pisanus Fraxi').

1
1 London 1873—1910 (with a backward look to 1800)

Ashbee’s three volumes, building on the foundation of James Campbell Reddie’s MSS Notes (BL Add. MS 38828–30 – see Ashbee III p. x1ix), provide the material for a history of the printing and publishing of clandestine erotic fiction in England from 1800 to 1884. The main producers in the first half of the century (especially the prolific period from c. 1820–40) were John Ascham of Chancery Lane (Ashbee III pp. 146–7); John Benjamin Brookes (died 1839) of Opera Colonade, Covent Garden and 9 Bond St. (Ashbee III p. 126); John Sudbury of 252 High Holborn (Ashbee III p. 126), who often printed items for George Cannon, of various addresses, who died in 1854, though his business was continued by his widow until 1864 (Ashbee I p. 114). Spanning the period 1825 to 1868 (when he died in prison) was the doyen of them all, William Dugdale (1800–68) (Ashbee I p.127), whose vast output up to c. 1865 largely consisted of translations (mainly by Reddie) and reprints of the numerous original English texts produced in the years between 1825 and 1840 by the above named publishers (see Chapters 8A and 8B for further details on this period). During Dugdale’s last three years (1865–68), James Campbell Reddie (surely the pivotal figure in the world of Victorian pornography, as collector, translator, author and transmitter of texts from authors to publishers) seems to have been the middleman supplying Dugdale with a series of original texts which emanated from a coterie of eminent Victorians including members of the army, the law, the world of letters, academia, commerce, the diplomatic service and even the nobility (see Notes to 44, and section on the ‘coterie’ below).

Ashbee is openly informative concerning the publishers up to 1868, though the names of those still living in 1884, when he sent his final volume to the printer, he naturally kept hidden. By various hints scattered through his third volume, he makes clear that most, if not all, of the pornographic fiction (apart from the few items done by J.C. Hotten, whom Ashbee is able to identify, since he died in 1873) was produced by one publisher/printer. This is fully supported by the examination of those items that have been traced: in paper, typography (layout and typefaces) and illustrations, they form a distinct printing family or ‘group’ (see list of printing ‘groups’, below). Several of these items have been identified, from external sources, as being publications of a man called by the names of ‘D. Cameron’ and ‘Lazenby’, who, as publisher, took on the mantle of Dugdale not least in that he continued to publish the MSS produced by the coterie. Campbell Reddie had evidently collected copies of these MSS; after 1877, when he left London to die in his native Scotland, they appear to have fallen, either by accident or design, into Lazenby’s hands (see Notes to 50–A, 14—A, 44, 49–A, 55–A, 59, 60–A).

William LAZENBY, alias Duncan CAMERON, alias(?) Thomas JUDD: c.1873–1886

Dates of birth and death unknown (c. 1825?–c.l888?); publishing activity from c.1873 to November 1886 when he was prosecuted and imprisoned at age 61. (see Appendix A).

In his earliest (identifiable) period of activity (c. 1873–76) while operating as ‘William Lazenby’, he appears to have printed the first three volumes of The Romance of Lust 1873 (written as a round-robin by some of the coterie and finally consolidated by W.S. Potter; see Notes to 75–A), with Campbell Reddie as the go-between. Later, in 1875–76 he seems to have set up as a bookdealer of sorts in Prince’s Rd., Lambeth, when, as Ashbee tells us, he arranged for the reprinting in Brussels of Sellon’s The New Epicurean 1875 and Phoebe Kissagen 1876, and Vol. I of his own creation Curiosities of Flagellation 1875, of which Ashbee says ‘… the publisher is also the author; his initials W.L. … [it was] … its author’s maiden production’ (see Notes to 55–A and 144). Ashbee I p.224 notes of the 1875 New Epicurean: ‘printed in Brussels for a London bookseller’, while in his own annotated copy (in the BL), he identifies the bookseller in a MS note as: ‘D. Cameron (Lazenby)’.¹

After his police troubles and arrest in 1876, he re-emerges c. 1878–79 as ‘D. Cameron’, having apparently come into possession meanwhile of many of the MSS. of the Monckton-Milnes/Burton/Swinburne coterie — probably left with him (or sold to him) by Campbell Reddie in the summer of 1877 or before (he may have used them to blackmail the authorities to avoid imprisonment in 1876 since he does not seem to have come to trial after the committal hearing in Lambeth; see Appendix A). His earliest publication during this second and final period is the Experimental Lecture (1878–79) by ‘Colonel Spanker’ [Colonel Studholme Hodgson, friend of Monckton-Milnes and Burton; see Notes on 82 and ‘coterie’, below]. Then in July 1879 he published another coterie joint effort Harlequin, Prince Cherrytop (see item 169) and began publications of the periodicals The Pearl, its Christmas Annuals Supplements, and its successors The Cremorne, 1882, Sub-Rosa, 1881, and The Boudoir, 1883–84. The compilers of the Enfer catalogue. 1913, using information from Charles Hirsch (see below), attribute The Pearl and The Romance of Lust to ‘Cameron, à Londres’, adding that ‘Cameron’ is a ‘nom d’emprunt’ – a ‘borrowed name’ or alias. It was probably borrowed from the real Duncan Cameron, flagellant friend of Swinburne and Burton who had died in 1870; see Notes on ‘coterie’, below. As stated earlier, both of these items, as well as the majority of the erotic and flagellant clandestine fiction (itemized by Ashbee I and III) produced between 1879 and 1883–84, fall within a single printing group, pointing firmly in Cameron/Lazenby’s direction as the source of this material. In the margin of his entry on reprint no. 6 of The Essay of Woman, Ashbee I. p.224 has this MS note:

… This worthless reprint by Scheible was again reprinted by D. Cameron of Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane (formerly Lazenby) in 1880 [P.O. Directory of 1880–83: ‘9 Southampton Buildings. Duncan Cameron, agent for commissions’]; wording of title page identical, although the type is less bold; paper thinner and more glazed; pagination the same; … Cameron’s reprint may be distinguished from that of Scheible by the following peculiarities: the only ornaments on the title page of the former are two signs, thus: –0–; some of the errors are corrected; the catch words are suppressed; ‘p 24’ is added on the last page; the punctuation is sometimes altered.

All these ‘peculiarities’ are characteristic of publications in the Cameron printing ‘group’. A short title listing of the publications in this group follows:

1873–76	The Romance of Lust (by W.S. Potter and others)
1878	Experimental Lecture (by Colonel Studholm Hodgson and others)
1879	Harlequin, Prince Cherrytop (by Sala, Pike, Swinburne and others)
1879	The Convent School (written by Cameron)
1879–83	The Pearl, with its ‘Christmas Annuals’ and successors The Cremome, 1882 and The Boudoir 1883–84 (Miss Coote’s Confessions, probably much more of The Pearlt and many of the tales in the later Annuals and periodicals probably written by Cameron)
1879–80	Reprint of Vol. I of Curiosities of Flagellation, adding Vol. 2
1880	Essay on Woman (see above)
1880	The Power of Mesmerism (another round–robin production; completed by Cameron?)
1880	The Story of a Dildoe
1880	Elements of Tuition (reprint)
1881	The Man of Pleasure at Paris (reprint)
1881	Adventures of a Rake (reprint)
1881	The Birchen Bouquet (reprint)
1881	The Loves of Venus (by Cameron?)
1881	Sins of the Cities of the Plain (by Simeon Solomon and Reddie?)
1881	Amatory Experiences of a Surgeon (by Campbell Reddie)
1882	Kate Handcock
1882	The Mysteries of Verbena House (by G.A. Sala and Reddie)
1883	Letters from Laura and Eveline (by Cameron)
1883	Quintessence of Birch Discipline (by Cameron)
1883	Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (reprint)
1883–84	The Pretty Women of Paris

(For further details on these, see Chapter 8A which draws largely from Ashbee I and III ; also Notes to later reprints, below.)

Sometime in 1884, Cameron seems to have started a publishing collaboration with the bookseller Edward Avery (see Notes on Avery, below) who had probably been selling Cameron material from his 18 Carlisle St. premises since 1880. Avery, with his bookshop outlet and contacts in the bookselling world of London, seems to have handled the distributing, retailing and advertising (Catalogues 1885, c.1886 and 1889, which contain many Cameron items, were probably issued by Avery). The items produced by this collaboration (i.e. after 1883) probably began with Randiana, Abishag and the Kaleidoscope of Vice (all 1884), and continued with the ‘Group A’ items in this bibliography from The Autobiography of a Flea (1885) and Country Retirement (c.1885) – the latter being typographically transitional from Cameron’s typical Long Primer Old Style, to the Long Primer Old Style of different design typical of Group A (see FIGS. 1, 3b). The Country Retirement text was set in a mixed fount of both faces. The series then continued with Queenie, Love with Safety, Clara Alcock, Lustful Turk, The Voluptuous Night and the pamphlets advertised in c.1886 (see [p1 – P15]: these were all pre-1886, the year in which Cameron was finally arrested and most of his stock seized). After Cameron’s disappearance, Avery, though persisting with the text type, changed the format and appearance of the publications, producing the items in Group A1. (Cameron may have been connected with the Judge (Judd?) family – also based in Lambeth – who, in the period 1860–80, were heavily engaged in the pornography business in London; see Appendix B).

Cameron’s Addresses (and Aliases)

Working backwards from the various addresses used by Cameron that surfaced as a result of his November 1886 arrest and prosecution (see Appendix A(v)), the following information emerges (using P.O. Directories, Rate Books and Census Lists) in relation to the various addresses mentioned in the trial report:

1. 2 Carleton Villas, The Grove, Lambeth. This was built in 1882–83. From 1883— 84 to 1886 Thomas JUDD was registered as a voter living there. On 18 February 1887, the road was renamed ‘The Grove’ and 2 Carleton Villas re-numbered 70, The Grove (now Vauxhall Grove; No. 70 still stands). From 1887, the occupier was a Mr. Maddick (there was a printer operating from 1 Crane Court, Fleet St. called Edward Maddick – a possible colleague of Lazenby/Cameron/Judd?). So ‘Thomas Judd’ had gone by 1887.
2. 142 New Kent Rd. P.O. Directory has, as occupiers:
   1880: Goland, Burton, Dobson (3 tenants?); ‘Burton’ could be suspected as being another alias: ‘William Burton, alias Andrew White’ prosecuted at Middlesex Sessions 1872 and 1874 ‘… for selling obscene material from 32 Holywell St.’ (Times, 19 November 1874)
   1881: Miss Halstead (a misprint? 1881 Census has occupier as Schoolmistress Lydia Hadland (aged 44) and her servant Mary Ann Glass (aged 29) and Ruth S. Crump (aged 34) daughter of Ann Crump (aged 71). Ruth was a ‘booksewer’.) 1882–85: no entries 1886: John Clayton
   1887: (i.e. a year after list was compiled) occupier, Henry Lazenby. It seems likely that Cameron maintained a room in this house from c.1880 where he seems to have kept most of his stock of French erotica. He used the name ‘Lazenby’ at this address (see Appendix A(v)).
3. 31 Furniual St. (Castle St. pre–1880). In the P.O. Directory for 1886–87 (i.e. 1885–86) four names appear as occupiers: Henry Mason: Law Stationer. J.T. Hayes: Bookgilder. Irving Hale: Solicitor and Wm. F. Harald: Law Stationer. The one name which disappears after 1887 (i.e. 1886) is Henry Mason, which points to him being ‘Cameron’. There was a Mason family operating as booksellers at 3 and 8 Holywell St. from the mid–1860s to the 1870s – so this may have been his real name.
4. 15 Norwich Court. P.O. Directory 1885–87 (i.e. 1884–86): Occupier, David Davies – the Times report does give us his real name (probably the lithograph colourer for many of‘Cameron’s’ illustrated books). Used as the main stock warehouse for his West end dealings (see Appendix A(v)).
5. Ashbee’s note (confirmed by J. Wilby’s testimony: Appendix A(v)) directed attention to Southampton Buildings. P.O. Directory 1883: 9 Southampton Buildings:Occupier, Duncan Cameron (who, according to Ashbee, was there from at least 1880).
6. Another address that emerged late in the research was 4 (and later, 5) Cornwall Residences, Allsop Place, Regents Park, N.W. This surfaced as being the residence of William S. Potter, compiler and part author of The Romance of Lust, 1873–76, which was probably printed by Lazenby/Cameron for the author. Potter spent the last two years of his life at this flat (1878–79), having moved there from 1 Adam St., Adelphi, in 1877–78. (Interestingly, Henry Bell...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Abbreviations
• Short-title List of Sources Used
• 1 London 1873—1910 (with a backward look to 1800)
• 2 Amsterdam and Rotterdam 1887–1912 (with a retrospective look at the Brussels trade 1870–1887)
• 3 Paris c. 1889–1930
• 4 How the Bibliography Works
• 5 Checklist of Clandestine Catalogues, 1885–c. 1930
• 6 Bibliography of Clandestine Erotic Fiction in English 1885-c.1930
• 7 Bibliographical Checklist of Clandestine Erotic Pamphlets in English c. 1880—c. 1912
• 8A Notes on Printers and Publisher/Booksellers 1800–1884
• Index of titles
• Index of names
• Appendix A Press reports on the Cameron/Lazenby trials 1876–1886
• Appendix B Press reports of the Judge family trials 1862–1883
• Appendix C Extract concerning Nichols, Carrington and Avery
• Appendix D Hirsch’s memoirs of Oscar Wilde and Smithers
• Appendix E Various memoirs concerning Smithers, Nichols and Lamplugh/Woolley
• Appendix F Memoirs of, and by, Carrington
• Appendix G Concerning the fate of the Ashbee collection
• Appendix H J. H. Ashworth and the Smithers-Nichols partnership
• Index of themes