Word: cleland
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Unfortunately, no two judges can be counted on to read the test results the same way. After judging John Cleland's 200-year-old Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, better known as Fanny Hill, the New York Court of Appeals recently cleared the all-time erotic bestseller on the ground of "literary value." Applying the same tests to the same book, courts in Rhode Island and Massachusetts banned it. Last week the banners were joined by New Jersey's Bergen County Superior Court Judge Morris Pashman, who found Fanny "sufficiently obscene to forfeit the protection...
Though "sex is not synonymous with obscenity," he said, Fanny Hill makes it so. "Free rein," Judge Pashman added, "should not be given under the guise of constitutional guarantees to vilely depict perversions and sexual adventures as John Cleland saw fit 200 years ago. This is not the way to a better constitutional world; it is rather the path to decay and decline. The Constitution should not be the sword of the shameful profiteer of filth. It must be the shield to protect our sense of moral decency." Next testing station: the New Jersey Supreme Court, which will have...
...Cleland's attitude toward sex is "more healthy" than that of many modern novels, Konigsberg testified...
...terms appear in the Commonwealth statute and constitute the standards used by the Massachusetts Obscene Literature Control Commission, which recommended prosecution of Fanny Hill. The action against the book itself was taken by Attorney General Edward W. Brooke. The case is formally titled Brooke vs. A book Named John Cleland's "Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" (Commonly known as "Fanny Hill...
...year-old novel written by John Cleland is found to violate Commonwealth statutes, "distribution" of the book by G.P. Putnam's Sons, the publisher, will be forbidden. Such a decision would theoretically include libraries, as well as all news stands and book-stores...