Essence Über Alles
By Dian Hanson. Excerpt from the book 'History of Men's Magazines, Vol. I'
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The camera was invented in the 1830s. In 1839 the first crude negative was invented, allowing multiple copies of a single image to be produced. By 1865 camera and negative technology were sufficiently advanced that they could be mastered by ordinary men - who promptly began taking and distributing photos of naked women.
At the same time printing technology was improving, spurred by an increase in literacy. Prior to the Victorian era many people lived in the country, worked as farmers and were functionally illiterate. The Industrial Revolution brought the farmers, along with new immigrants, to the cities and into factories. The resulting workingclass ghettos, with their crime, prostitution and high child mortality, eventually led to social reforms, including better education for all.
When only the upper classes read, demand for print was limited, so books and magazines were made in small quantity, keeping them costly. With widespread literacy, reading for pleasure became a working class fad. Publishers hastened to increase their output to meet the growing demand for a new kind of reading matter. Expensive hardbound books were beyond the average wage earner's means, but cheap magazines and magazine - like "dime novels" filled the bill. In America these publications focused on action stories of the Wild West, true crime and romance fiction. In England and France detective fiction was equally popular.
As early as 1860 more explicit "romance" publications appeared in New York. Sold clandestinely and in small quantity they were produced for years with no one taking much notice, until 1868, when they came to the attention of a young bookkeeper named Anthony Comstock. That Comstock had a special problem with what most men enjoy was clear from the start. A sample of his opinions on sexy literature:
"The effect of this cursed business on our youth and society, no pen can describe. It breeds lust. Lust defiles the body, debauches the imagination, corrupts the mind, deadens the will, destroys the memory, sears the conscience, hardens the heart and damns the soul. It unnerves the arm and steals away the elastic step. It robs the soul of manly virtues, and imprints upon the mind of the youth visions that throughout life curse the man or the woman. Like a panorama, the imagination seems to keep this hated thing before the mind, until it wears its way deeper and deeper, plunging the victim into practices that he loathes. This traffic has made rakes and libertines in society - skeletons in many a household. The family is polluted, the home desecrated, and each generation born into the world is more and more cursed by the inherited weakness, the harvest of this seed-sowing of the Evil One." Comstock wasted no time in smiting the Evil One in his own neighborhood; he rounded up a group of Irishmen he accused of producing pornography and demanded the police jail them.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
The camera was invented in the 1830s. In 1839 the first crude negative was invented, allowing multiple copies of a single image to be produced. By 1865 camera and negative technology were sufficiently advanced that they could be mastered by ordinary men - who promptly began taking and distributing photos of naked women.
At the same time printing technology was improving, spurred by an increase in literacy. Prior to the Victorian era many people lived in the country, worked as farmers and were functionally illiterate. The Industrial Revolution brought the farmers, along with new immigrants, to the cities and into factories. The resulting workingclass ghettos, with their crime, prostitution and high child mortality, eventually led to social reforms, including better education for all.
When only the upper classes read, demand for print was limited, so books and magazines were made in small quantity, keeping them costly. With widespread literacy, reading for pleasure became a working class fad. Publishers hastened to increase their output to meet the growing demand for a new kind of reading matter. Expensive hardbound books were beyond the average wage earner's means, but cheap magazines and magazine - like "dime novels" filled the bill. In America these publications focused on action stories of the Wild West, true crime and romance fiction. In England and France detective fiction was equally popular.
As early as 1860 more explicit "romance" publications appeared in New York. Sold clandestinely and in small quantity they were produced for years with no one taking much notice, until 1868, when they came to the attention of a young bookkeeper named Anthony Comstock. That Comstock had a special problem with what most men enjoy was clear from the start. A sample of his opinions on sexy literature:
"The effect of this cursed business on our youth and society, no pen can describe. It breeds lust. Lust defiles the body, debauches the imagination, corrupts the mind, deadens the will, destroys the memory, sears the conscience, hardens the heart and damns the soul. It unnerves the arm and steals away the elastic step. It robs the soul of manly virtues, and imprints upon the mind of the youth visions that throughout life curse the man or the woman. Like a panorama, the imagination seems to keep this hated thing before the mind, until it wears its way deeper and deeper, plunging the victim into practices that he loathes. This traffic has made rakes and libertines in society - skeletons in many a household. The family is polluted, the home desecrated, and each generation born into the world is more and more cursed by the inherited weakness, the harvest of this seed-sowing of the Evil One." Comstock wasted no time in smiting the Evil One in his own neighborhood; he rounded up a group of Irishmen he accused of producing pornography and demanded the police jail them.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
History of Men's Magazines Vol. 1
Hardcover, 21.3 x 27.7 cm (8.4 x 10.9 in.), 460 pages
$ 59.99
$ 59.99
The definitive annotated and illustrated history of girlie periodicals (1900-World War II)
Real Screen Fun, USA, 1936