This innovative book comprises nine essays from leading scholars which investigate the relationship between fiction, censorship and the legal construction of obscenity in Britain between 1850 and the present day. Each of the chapters focuses on a distinct historical period and each has something new to say about the literary works it spotlights. Overall, the volume fundamentally refreshes our understanding of the way texts had to negotiate the moral and legal minefields of public reception. The book is original in the historical period it covers, starting in 1850 and bringing debates about fiction, obscenity and censorship up to the present day. The history that is uncovered reveals the different ways in which censorship functioned and continues to function, with considerations of Statutory definitions of Obscenity alongside the activities of non-government organisations such as the anti-vice societies, circulating libraries, publishers, printers and commentators. The essays in this book argue that the vigour with which novels were hunted down by the prowling prudes of the book's title encouraged some writers to explore sexual, excremental and moral obscenities with even more determination. Bringing such debates up to date, the book considers the ongoing impact of censorship on fiction and the current state of critical thinking about the status and freedom of literature. Given contemporary debates about the limits on freedom of speech in liberal, secular societies, the interrogation of these questions is both timely and necessary.

Using a combination of poems, short stories, and essays, through this book you will be taken into a world of dreams. Dreams which will take you to a new horizon to explore what lies over the mountains. Dreams that take you back to re-discover times long since gone. Dreams that remained just dreams, or dreams that you dropped in a trash barrel. You will also find dreams you have forgotten, but they have not forgotten you. You will discover those dreams and more here, if you only use your imagination.

Provides an introduction to American pulp fiction during the twentieth century with brief author biographies and lists of their works.

In Long Drawn Out Trip: My Life, Gerald Scarfe tells his life story for the first time. With captivating, often thrilling stories, he takes us from his childhood and early days at Punch and Private Eye, through his long and occasionally tumultuous career as the Sunday Times cartoonist, to his film-making at the BBC and much-loved designs for Pink Floyd's The Wall and Disney's Hercules. Along the way he has drawn Churchill from life, gone on tour with The Beatles and thoroughly upset Mrs Mary Whitehouse. It is a very personal, wickedly funny and caustically insightful account of an artist's life at the forefront of contemporary culture and society.

Nominated for a Bouchercon Anthony Award. The definitive story of the emergence of the post war publishers, with an introduction to pre-war publishers. Extensive coverage of: the emergence of Panther, Corgi, Pan and others from the fly by night post war publishing world; the mystery surrounding publishers such as Scion, Gannet, Muir Watson, Brown Watson, R&L Locker, Harborough and many, many more; the search for the origins of those many pseudonyms and house names, such as Griff, Hank Janson, Ben Sarto, Vector Magroon, Volsted Gridban, Roland Vane, Dale Bogar. The story of the entanglement of publishing with a sleazy underworld and the complete low down on the Hank Janson Obscenity Trials. Also a run down on the 1950s comics purge, the superb artists of the period -- Reginald Heade, Ron Turner, Denis McLoughlin, James McConnell, Perl -- with prime examples of their work, and interviews and comments from the authors and publishers of the era. A superb book that documents Steve Holland's many years of research in a one well-illustrated authoritative volume. All the information is illustrated by many black and white and colour illustrations of those great paperback covers.