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The obscenity trial over the publication of James Joyce's ''Ulysses'' in ''The Little Review'', an American literary magazine, occurred in 1921 and effectively banned publication of Joyce's novel in the United States. After ''
The Little Review ''The Little Review'', an American literary magazine founded by Margaret Anderson in Chicago's historic Fine Arts Building, published literary and art work from 1914 to May 1929. With the help of Jane Heap and Ezra Pound, Anderson created a maga ...
'' published the "Nausicaa" episode of ''Ulysses'' in the April 1920 issue of the magazine, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice instigated obscenity charges against ''Little Review'' editors Margaret Caroline Anderson and
Jane Heap Jane Heap (November 1, 1883 – June 18, 1964) was an American publisher and a significant figure in the development and promotion of literary modernism. Together with Margaret Anderson, her friend and business partner (who for some years was a ...
. The editors were found guilty under laws associated with the
Comstock Act The Comstock laws were a set of federal acts passed by the United States Congress under the Grant administration along with related state laws.Dennett p.9 The "parent" act (Sect. 211) was passed on March 3, 1873, as the Act for the Suppression o ...
of 1873, which made it illegal to send materials deemed obscene through the
U.S. Mail The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U ...
. Anderson and Heap incurred a $100 fine, and were forced to cease publishing ''Ulysses'' in ''
The Little Review ''The Little Review'', an American literary magazine founded by Margaret Anderson in Chicago's historic Fine Arts Building, published literary and art work from 1914 to May 1929. With the help of Jane Heap and Ezra Pound, Anderson created a maga ...
''.


Precedents in obscenity law

The legal concepts of obscenity underpinning Anderson and Heap's trial go back to a standard first established in the 1868 English case of '' Regina v. Hicklin''.Pagnattaro 218 In this case, Lord Chief Justice Cockburn defined the "test of obscenity" as "whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall." This standard, known as the
Hicklin test The Hicklin test is a legal test for obscenity established by the English case ''Regina v Hicklin'' (1868). At issue was the statutory interpretation of the word "obscene" in the Obscene Publications Act 1857, which authorized the destruction of ...
, influenced American jurisprudence, first in ''United States v. Bennett'' (1879), upholding a court charge based upon the Hicklin obscenity test and allowing the test to be applied to passages of a text and not necessarily a text in its entirety.Pagnattaro 219 The Hicklin test was endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court in '' Rosen v. United States'' in 1896 and was adhered to by American courts well into the twentieth century. In 1873, after the lobbying attempts of Anthony Comstock, head of New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, the U.S. Congress amended a pre-existing law and enacted the
Comstock Act The Comstock laws were a set of federal acts passed by the United States Congress under the Grant administration along with related state laws.Dennett p.9 The "parent" act (Sect. 211) was passed on March 3, 1873, as the Act for the Suppression o ...
, which made it a crime to knowingly mail obscene materials or advertisements and information about obscene materials,
abortion Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion"; these occur in approximately 30% to 40% of pregnan ...
, or contraception. This act adopted the Hicklin test for deeming which materials would be considered obscene.


Background

The U.S. Post Office confiscated the October 1917 issue of ''
The Little Review ''The Little Review'', an American literary magazine founded by Margaret Anderson in Chicago's historic Fine Arts Building, published literary and art work from 1914 to May 1929. With the help of Jane Heap and Ezra Pound, Anderson created a maga ...
'' due to the publication of Wyndham Lewis' story "Cantleman's Springmate", which focuses on a young, disillusioned soldier who, while awaiting deployment to the front lines of World War I, seduces a young girl and afterwards ignores her letters informing him of her pregnancy. The story was seized due to its perceived sexual lewdness and anti-war sentiments which were thought to violate the Comstock Act prohibiting "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" material from being mailed.Baggett 176 John Quinn, a successful lawyer and patron of the arts who was benefactor to both ''The Little Review'' and Ezra Pound,de Grazia 8 the magazine's foreign editor at the time, believed the magazine to have been suppressed due to editors Anderson and Heap's support of anarchists Emma Goldman and
Alexander Berkman Alexander Berkman (November 21, 1870June 28, 1936) was a Russian-American anarchist and author. He was a leading member of the Anarchism, anarchist movement in the early 20th century, famous for both his political activism and his w ...
and anti-war statements they published in New York newspapers. Their support of radical political figures had already led to their eviction from their New York studio office. Following this suppression, it was difficult for Anderson and Heap to find a New York printer willing to print episodes of '' Ulysses''. When they found a printer, ''The Little Review'' began its serialization of ''Ulysses'', publishing the first episode from the work in March, 1918. Following this first publication of ''Ulysses'', three issues of ''The Little Review'' were seized and burned by the U.S. Post Office on the grounds that its prose was deemed 'obscene'. The January 1919 issue which contained the "Lestrygonians" episode of ''Ulysses'' was the first that was seized; the May 1919, which contained "Scylla and Charybdis," was second; and the January 1920 issue, which contained the "Cyclops" episode, was third.de Grazia 14 In 1920, a New York attorney whose daughter had received an unsolicited copy of ''The Little Review'' issue brought it to the attention of
John S. Sumner John Saxton Sumner (September 22, 1876 - June 20, 1971) headed the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV), a New York state censorship body empowered to recommend obscenity cases to the appropriate prosecutors. He served as Associat ...
, secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.Ellman (1982), pp. 502–04 Sumner lodged a complaint that September, and on October 4 Anderson and Heap were arrested and charged with obscenity for publishing "Nausicaa" in the April 1920 issue of ''The Little Review''. This episode was an account of protagonist
Leopold Bloom Leopold Bloom is the fictional protagonist and hero of James Joyce's 1922 novel '' Ulysses''. His peregrinations and encounters in Dublin on 16 June 1904 mirror, on a more mundane and intimate scale, those of Ulysses/ Odysseus in Homer's ep ...
fantasizing about a young girl named Gerty MacDowell who leans back to expose herself to Bloom. The scene culminates in Bloom's orgasm, which legal historian
Edward de Grazia Edward Richard de Grazia (February 5, 1927 – April 11, 2013) was an American lawyer, writer, and free speech activist.Douglas Martin(obituary), '' The New York Times'', April 24, 2013. De Grazia was born in Chicago. He served in the U.S. Army ...
, in ''
Girls Lean Back Everywhere ''Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius'' is a book written by American lawyer, Edward de Grazia. It is a book chronicling the history of literary censorship in the United States and elsewhere. Contents The ...
'', argues would have likely escaped the average reader's notice due to Joyce's metaphorical language.


Trial

The trial was held in February 1921 before three judges in a court of special sessions. It considered only the "Nausicaa" episode of ''Ulysses'', with particular attention on Bloom's orgasm and Gerty's role as co-actor. The prosecutor was Joseph Forrester, Assistant District Attorney, and his only witness was John Sumner. John Quinn represented Anderson and Heap, though both disagreed with him over which approach would make the most appropriate defense. Quinn maintained that Anderson and Heap should remain quiet and not testify, so as to present themselves as modest, inconspicuous and conservative women. Though not required by law, Quinn decided to produce three literary experts to attest to the literary merits of ''Ulysses'', as well as ''The Little Reviews broader reputation. The first expert witness was
Philip Moeller Philip Moeller (26 August 1880 – 26 April 1958) was an American stage producer and director, playwright and screenwriter, born in New York where he helped found the short-lived Washington Square Players and then with Lawrence Langner and Hele ...
, of the
Theatre Guild The Theatre Guild is a theatrical society founded in New York City in 1918 by Lawrence Langner, Philip Moeller, Helen Westley and Theresa Helburn. Langner's wife, Armina Marshall, then served as a co-director. It evolved out of the work of th ...
, who interpreted ''Ulysses'' using the Freudian method of unveiling the subconscious mind, which prompted one of the judges to ask him to "speak in a language that the court could understand".Anderson 220 The next witness was Scofield Thayer, editor of '' The Dial'', another literary magazine of the time, who "was forced to admit that if he had had the desire to publish ''Ulysses'' he would have consulted a lawyer first—and not published it". The final witness was English novelist, lecturer, and critic
John Cowper Powys John Cowper Powys (; 8 October 187217 June 1963) was an English philosopher, lecturer, novelist, critic and poet born in Shirley, Derbyshire, where his father was vicar of the parish church in 1871–1879. Powys appeared with a volume of verse ...
, who declared that ''Ulysses'' was a "beautiful piece of work in no way capable of corrupting the minds of young girls". During the trial, the assistant district attorney announced that he would read the offending passage aloud to the court, a proposition to which one judge objected. The judge believed such indecent material "should not be read in the presence of a young woman such as Anderson".Baggett 185 In her autobiography, ''My Thirty Years' War'', Anderson writes: "regarding me with protective paternity,
he judge He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
refused to allow the obscenity to be read in my hearing".Anderson 221 When it was pointed out to the judge that Anderson was the publisher, he declared that he was sure "she didn't know the significance of what she was publishing". Following this, the offending passage of ''Ulysses'' was read aloud, and the court recessed for one week so that judges could read the entire "Nausicaa" episode. Quinn's argument against the obscenity charges was based upon claims that the prurient material in ''Ulysses'' was actually a deterrent rather than a pernicious influence. He made further arguments that one needed to be acquainted with the city of Dublin to truly understand the work and that the sporadic punctuation, and the perceived incomprehensibility of the novel, was due to Joyce's poor eyesight. At one point in the trial Quinn confessed that "I myself do not understand Ulysses—I think Joyce has carried his method too far," whereupon one of the presiding judges replied, "Yes, it sounds to me like the ravings of a disordered mind—I can't see why anyone would want to publish it". In accordance with obscenity precedents set by ''United States v. Bennett'', the panel of three judges decided that the passages from the "Nausicaa" episode did indeed constitute obscenity and thereby violated the Comstock laws. Anderson and Heap were found guilty of the charge of obscenity and were forced to discontinue publishing any further episodes from ''Ulysses'', have their fingerprints taken, and pay a fine of one hundred dollars.


Aftermath and responses

''The Little Review'' ceased its serialization of ''Ulysses'', with "Oxen of the Sun" being the last episode of the novel to be featured in the magazine—roughly the first third of that episode appears in the magazine's August 1920 issue. Anderson and Heap were required to restrict the magazine's content to less inflammatory material, eventually removing their motto "Making No Compromise with the Public Taste" from the magazine's cover page in 1921. Disheartened by the trial, the lack of support from the intellectual community, and the future outlook for art in America, Anderson considered ceasing to publish ''The Little Review'', and eventually ceded control of the magazine to Heap. ''The Little Review'' continued to be published until 1929. In her article "Art and the Law," written after being served with obscenity allegations but before the ensuing trial, Heap pointed out the irony of being prosecuted for printing the thoughts of the character Gerty MacDowell, "an innocent, simple, childish girl," in attempts to protect the minds of young women.Heap 6 Heap first asks "If the young girl corrupts, can she also be corrupted?" and goes on to quip, "If there is anything I really fear it is the mind of the young girl". She also argued that:
Mr. Joyce was not teaching early Egyptian perversions nor inventing new ones. Girls lean back everywhere, showing lace and silk stockings; wear low-cut sleeveless blouses, breathless bathing suits; men think thoughts and have emotions about these things everywhere—seldom as delicately and imaginatively as Mr. Bloom—and no one is corrupted. Can merely reading about the thoughts he thinks corrupt a man when his thoughts do not?
Although the trial was ostensibly concerned with the "Nausicaa" episode, a number of scholars, such as Holly Baggett, Jane Marek and Adam Parkes, argue that it was motivated against the iconoclastic character of the magazine and its "politically radical lesbian" editors.Marek 90 Though Quinn defended Anderson and Heap in the trial, in his letters to Ezra Pound, Quinn expressed distaste for his defendants. In a letter from October 16, 1920 Quinn wrote, "I have no interest at all in defending people who are stupidly and brazenly and Sapphoistically and pederastically and urinally, and menstrually violat ngthe law, and think they are courageous". Anderson and Heap faced not only a hostile prosecution and judges indifferent to the literary merits of Ulysses, but also a defense attorney who, in some ways, sided with the prosecution. In ''Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity: A Cultural Biography'',
Irene Gammel Irene Gammel is a Canadian literary historian, biographer, and curator. She has published numerous books including ''Baroness Elsa'', a groundbreaking cultural biography of New York Dada artist and poet Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, and ...
argues that the trial was ultimately a battle over women's issues and the paternalist functions of obscenity laws at the time .Gammel 253 Gammel asserts that Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, a prolific contributor of poetry to ''The Little Review'', became the magazine's figurehead in a fight for authority in determining the subject matter women should be able to write about and read. Gammel writes, "If Heap was the field marshall for The Little Review's vanguard battle against puritan conventions and traditional sexual aesthetics, then the Baroness was to become its fighting machine". Though effectively banned in the United States, ''Ulysses'' was published in Paris by
Sylvia Beach Sylvia may refer to: People *Sylvia (given name) * Sylvia (singer), American country music and country pop singer and songwriter *Sylvia Robinson, American singer, record producer, and record label executive * Sylvia Vrethammar, Swedish singer cre ...
in 1922, one year after the trial. Not until the 1933 case ''
United States v. One Book Called Ulysses ''United States v. One Book Called Ulysses'', 5 F. Supp. 182 (S.D.N.Y. 1933), is a decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in a case dealing with freedom of expression. At issue was whether James Joyce's ...
'' could the novel be published in the United States without fear of prosecution.Pagnattaro 232


Notes


References

*Anderson, Margaret C. "'Ulysses' in Court.
''The Little Review'' Jan-Mar. 1921
22-25. Web. *Anderson, Margaret C. ''My Thirty Years' War: An Autobiography by Margaret Anderson''. New York: Covici, Friede, 1930. Print. *Baggett, Holly. "The Trials of Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap." ''A Living of Words: American Women in Print Culture''. Ed. Susan Albertine. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995. 169-188. Print. *Birmingham, Kevin (2014). ''The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses''. New York: Penguin Press. . * * de Grazia, Edward (1992). '' Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius''. New York: Random House. . *Gammel, Irene. "''The Little Review'' and Its Dada Fuse, 1918 to 1921.
''Elsa: Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity. A Cultural Biography''
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002.238-261. Print. * Goldman, Jonatha
"The Difficult Odyssey of James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’"
'' The Village Voice'' (January 28, 2022). * *Heap, Jane. "Art and the Law.
''The Little Review'' Sept. 1920
5-7. Web. *Lappin, Linda. "Jane Heap And Her Circle." ''Prairie Schooner'' 78.4 (2004): 5-25. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 2 Dec. 2013. *Marek, Jayne E. "Reader Critics: Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, and the ''Little Review''." ''Women Editing Modernism: "Little" Magazines & Literary History''. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1995. 60-100. Print. *Pagnattaro, Marisa Anne
"Carving A Literary Exception: The Obscenity Standard And Ulysses"
''Twentieth Century Literature: A Scholarly and Critical Journal'' 47.2 (2001): 217-240. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 2 Dec. 2013. *Parkes, Adam. "'Literature and Instruments for Abortion': 'Nausicaa' And ''The Little Review'' Trial." ''James Joyce Quarterly'' 34.3 (1997): 283-301. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 2 Dec. 2013.


External links


''The Little Review''
at The Modernist Journals Project: cover-to-cover, searchable digital edition of volumes 1-9 (March 1914 - Winter 1922)
''The Little Review''
at Internet Archive (Scanned copies of original editions from 1914 to 1922).
''Little Review Records, 1914-1964''
at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Archives (Finding Aid for the editorial records, including photographs and correspondence) {{DEFAULTSORT:Obscenity trial of Ulysses in The ''Little Review'' Ulysses (novel) Obscenity controversies in literature United States Free Speech Clause case law 1921 in American law Book censorship in the United States