The Flash Press
Sporting Male Weeklies in 1840s New York
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- $22.99
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
Obscene, libidinous, loathsome, lascivious. Those were just some of the ways critics described the nineteenth-century weeklies that covered and publicized New York City’s extensive sexual underworld. Publications like the Flash and the Whip—distinguished by a captivating brew of lowbrow humor and titillating gossip about prostitutes, theater denizens, and sporting events—were not the sort generally bound in leather for future reference, and despite their popularity with an enthusiastic readership, they quickly receded into almost complete obscurity. Recently, though, two sizable collections of these papers have resurfaced, and in The Flash Press three renowned scholars provide a landmark study of their significance as well as a wide selection of their ribald articles and illustrations.
Including short tales of urban life, editorials on prostitution, and moralizing rants against homosexuality, these selections epitomize a distinct form of urban journalism. Here, in addition to providing a thorough overview of this colorful reportage, its editors, and its audience, the authors examine nineteenth-century ideas of sexuality and freedom that mixed Tom Paine’s republicanism with elements of the Marquis de Sade’s sexual ideology. They also trace the evolution of censorship and obscenity law, showing how a string of legal battles ultimately led to the demise of the flash papers: editors were hauled into court, sentenced to jail for criminal obscenity and libel, and eventually pushed out of business. But not before they forever changed the debate over public sexuality and freedom of expression in America’s most important city.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cohen, Gilfoyle and Horowitz, history professors and chroniclers of 19th-century American sexuality, offer an engaging scholarly examination of the little-known weekly newspapers that reported on the sexual underworld of 1840s New York. Such journals as the Whip, the Weekly Rake, and the Sunday Flash used the posture of moral reform-"criticizing" brothels, prostitution and vice-as a thinly-veiled sleight to inform its readership exactly where to get the action. Unlike the purely erotic periodicals to follow in later decades, these papers' political agendas used "sex to attack privilege and hypocrisy" until they were shut down in 1843 by New York's deeply conservative judiciary. A glimpse into a "spectacle of modern Sodom" featuring hoop-skirted madams and top-hatted gents, the authors' detailed history of the "flash press" benefits from original illustrations and text-a full half of the book is devoted to excerpts, with minimal commentary. Less successful are academic divergences, which at times get so dry one forgets the authors' subjects. A thorough account of this quirky, salacious moment in journalism, readers familiar with New York will find a city both foreign and familiar, and a sense that the local weekly used to be a lot more fun.