Reuters Reports The world’s first known piece of printed pornography, described as the “quintessence of debauchery,” is expected to reach up to 35,000 pounds ($65,040) when it is auctioned next month.
“Sodom,” penned in the mid-1670s, has been attributed to John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester and is described by auction house Sotheby’s as a “closet drama rather than for the stage” with pornography “in almost every line.”
Awww, No comments?
So is this an example of the traditional values we should return to?
It is childish I know, but I love stories like this. It gives me a bit of peevish glee to see that our ancestors may not have been as golden glowing as we like to imagine them, and in fact that might have been far more perverse.
Willful blindness about the nature of history has always confounded me. This blindness is why I love to see documents like this. Document like this, which make us face our past.
The Internet did not create pornography. “Activist judges” and “dirty liberals hippies” did not create homosexuality. These things have always been. The family has survived. It needs no laws to protect it.
It is a sort of nostal-topia for a time that did not exist. And that nostal-topia is what irks me about attacks on modern progressivism. Our world is a far better place than it was fifty or one hundred years ago. And, to get on the soapbox for a second, what gives me hope is that in looking back, we can also reflect and look forward. We can take this opportunity to work to make the world an even better place.
Re:Awww, No comments?
There’s a reason why hookers are called the second oldest profession. No one is under the belief that porn is unique to our time but a public library back then would not have had that book on the shelf and rightly so.
Re:Awww, No comments?
“A public library back then would not have had that book on the shelf and rightly so”
Oh really? A public library, you say? This is your line of argument? Rather than discuss my point, you faintly acknowledge it, then go off on a tangent that proves my case for historical blindness and nostal-topia. I am amused that you picture libraries reacting in the modern sense to a book of this nature.
According to the article the work was penned in the mid-mid-1670s. In that time period, there weren’t public libraries in the modern sense. Checking my 2004 World Book about the only “public” library in Britain was Chetham’s Library in Manchester–dating from 1653. The United Kingdom public library system didn’t become well established until the late 1800’s.
The private libraries of the time were free to make their own decisions on whither or not to add the item to their collections–as are our modern libraries. Zane and Anaïs Nin are in quite a few collections, as I recall. My point is libraries indeed had books such as this in their collections and society’s fabric was not rent asunder.
Re:Awww, No comments?
“My point is libraries indeed had books such as this in their collections and society’s fabric was not rent asunder.”
If the libraries weren’t public then what’s society got to do with it?