Edgar Crook considers a perhaps less-known component of the Library’s Collection In every society and in every age there has been an appreciation of, and therefore a market for, erotica. The temples of Khajuraho in India and the murals in Pompeii bear testament to man’s historic desire to depict the sexual—and with modern means of communication the desire to produce and transmit erotic images remains. Literary erotica has existed alongside erotic art and sculpture for as long as the written word. In ancient Greece and Rome the writing of erotic poems and stories were an accepted and popular literary form. Later in the Christian west, writers of erotica were to become subject to the Church, censorship and the law, and while there was never a period when there was not production of erotic books, their writings were often driven underground. Today there are few libraries that do not have on their shelves books that were once banned or considered obscene. The works of the Earl of Rochester, Boccaccio or even Pauline Reage are widely available. What was once considered obscene is now acceptable. Although notable works of erotica have survived, comparatively little of the huge amount of privately published erotica has. Some can be found still in private hands, and a little is preserved in libraries. But, as Henry Ashbee explained in the introduction to his bibliography of erotic literature, Index librorum prohibitorum (1877):
The collecting criteria of the National Library of Australia provides:
To fulfill this mission, the Library has to collect in every field—including that of erotica. Though it may come as a surprise to some that the Library’s shelves contain such weighty volumes as Big ‘n’ Bouncy or Bra Busters, the National Library holds these and many other contemporary periodicals. It does not, however, have a comprehensive historical collection of erotic material. The very few libraries that do have good collections of erotica, such as the British Library, were able to acquire privately owned and formed collections. And it has only been comparatively recently that erotica producers have been able to market their wares without significant fear of prosecution, and so are able to send in copies of their publications as legal deposit. Librarians in Australia, when considering their collecting intentions, have as a guiding policy the Australian Library and Information Association’s Statement on freedom, which reads:
The examination of the society and culture of a period by necessity involves the study of its sexual life. The erotic matter created in, for example, the Victorian era is of great interest to the modern historian. The surviving sexual diaries and pornographic novels of this era provide insight into ordinary lives that are just as important as those provided by the many ‘improving’ works or the social novels that are still so widely enjoyed.
Erotica has also had a very large, if unacknowledged, role in the development of our entertainment and electronic media. To serve its audience, the erotica industry has always been in the forefront of technology. This was certainly the case with the photographic media. In France, the first photographic process, the Daguerreotype, was immediately put to use producing erotica in 1839. Though believed obscene at the time of production in the 1840s and 50s, the photographs produced are now collectors items, commanding very high purchase prices, preserved by galleries and museums, and widely republished. Although producing and copying of these early photographs was time-consuming, difficult and expensive, the trade in erotic photographs soon grew into a thriving industry. It also assisted in pushing photographic developments along, as people strived for an easier medium for their trade. Much as many Victorians attempted to portray themselves as highly moral beings, erotica was pervasive, and the sale of ‘naughty’ or ‘dirty’ postcards was immense. In the United States in January 1874, for example, it was reported that 194 000 photographs (as well as 60 300 rubber articles) had been seized by authorities; while in England in the same year, one lone photographer in London, raided by the police, was found with over 130 000 nude photographs. Surprisingly, both England and the United States were very small fish in the postcard trade—which was based in Germany and France. Both these countries had very large numbers of photographic studios, turning out millions of 'postcards' annually. What is most astounding about this trade is that it functioned before the invention of the first easily or readily useable camera—the Kodak no. 1—which did not come onto the market until 1888. As with still camera photography, the development of moving pictures was also quickly adapted for the production of erotica, with the first such film being produced in 1896, the same year as the invention of moving pictures (and in the same studio—by Thomas Alva Edison and his staff). The growth in use of small home 8mm and 16mm film cameras and home projectors was also spurred on by the erotic home entertainment trade. The capacity to privately view erotica likewise drove the development of video cameras and the growth in popularity of the home video player.
Indeed, it was not until the mid-1980s that erotica commanded less than 50 per cent of the entire retail video trade, and even today it still has up to 20 per cent of the market in an industry worth billions of dollars. The Internet is the latest and clearest example of the media benefiting from the demand for erotica—which has been a significant driver behind some of the developments on the World Wide Web. In response, the National Library is considering extending its collections into cyberspace: with the possibility of sites containing adult content being selected for the National Collection of Electronic Publications, thus giving a representative picture of Australian erotica on the Internet. At a less ‘hi-tech’ level, the National Library has a collection of Australian erotic pictorial periodicals mainly dating from the latter half of the twentieth century. In the 1940s there was a freeing up of the availability to openly purchase publications of this sort of material—apparently mainly for the benefit of soldiers looking for diversion in the field or in training during World War Two.
From that time onward, there has been no lack of Australian-produced erotic magazines. Among the popular early titles were Pertinent (1940–47) and Man Junior (1937–73), and the later titles Gals and Gags (from 1953) and Stag (from 1964). These publications were quite tame by today’s standards, and featured in each issue generally only one or two nude photographs amongst the many clothed ones. The nude photographs were of women in what were termed ‘artistic’ poses, and were often airbrushed. Although these periodicals and others were freely available for purchase, they were still seen as socially unacceptable until the advent in 1953 of the US publication Playboy. This was the progenitor of the over-the-counter publication, mainly because unlike its Australian equivalents it contained alongside its photographs articles by known authors and journalists. Playboy’s success was due to its being the first periodical which had both the pictures which people wanted to see, and the articles which could be used as an excuse for its initial purchase.
Since the 1970s, a decade which saw a huge rise in the open production of erotica, the National Library has received into its Collection a large number of erotic periodicals and other publications. Many of the periodicals are wholly Australian in origin, while some are Australian editions of US magazines such as Penthouse, Hustler and Playboy. Particularly since the early 1970s, the Library has also collected gay erotica (something also undertaken by the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives in Melbourne, which collects comprehensively in this area). The erotica industry today produces an often hidden but still very substantial amount of all published material. Erotica has become accepted as part of the legitimate publishing world, so much so that weekly in Australia in excess of 300 000 copies of Australian ‘adult’ publications are sold. It is important that the National Library collects this material, not for the salacious enjoyment of the contemporary reader, but as an indicator of social morés, standards and public attitudes to matters sexual. With this in mind, it is clear that there is no merit in being coy today and therefore delivering an incomplete picture to future researchers. It is also suggested from our view of the past that future generations will probably view much of the erotica of today as we now view Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations from the late nineteenth century—as more enchanting than shocking. EDGARD CROOK works as a librarian in the Electronic Unit of the National Library |
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