Edmund Curll, Bookseller (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Edmund Curll, Bookseller Winfried Schleiner Paul Baines and Pat Rogers , Edmund Curll, Bookseller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007). Pp. x, 388. $55.00. This is a solid and detailed book worthy of the significance of its subject matter, the controversial but unquestionably central eighteenth-century bookseller Edmund Curll. The "abominable" or "unspeakable" Curll, as he came to be known by his contemporaries (mainly because he published at the margins of what was acceptable, but also because he repeatedly published private papers without permission), was the subject of a monograph in 1927 by Ralph Straus, The Unspeakable Curll. The present book, however, compares to the earlier one as does a modern Cadillac to a Model T. It is based on Herculean new work in archives, eighteenth-century newspapers and similar publications, in state papers and Treasury papers (relating to Curll's activities as a government informer), in Chancery records (relating to Curll's many legal problems), and in the House of Lords Records Office. However, while the new book offers a wealth of research and hitherto unknown material, its attitude toward its subject remains surprisingly similar to that of the earlier biography. The 1927 book presented Curll essentially as a negative influence, a purveyor of scandalous and obscene material, and as an antagonist of Pope; Straus appears to have been embarrassed by the subject matter, using euphemisms and obfuscations that obscure the contents of some of the most notorious of Curll's publications. The present book retraces the publisher's activities with a wealth of new facts and evidence: about his punishment to stand in the pillory, for example, and how he was prepared to turn the event in his favor by supplying printed broadsheets to passersby. Baines and Rogers offer hitherto unexplored information from the House of Lords Records Office relating to the bookseller's petition for clemency and his kneeling at the bar of the House. While the earlier book does not even mention the Chancery suit, Pope v. Curll (1741), for instance, the modern authors argue the suit's tremendous significance; it "remains a leading case in English law as the first important test regarding copyright in personal letters" (285). Despite such crucial clarifications, however, a reader of Baines's and Rogers's book might feel that the information about the contents of many—particularly the offending or controversial—publications remains slim and sometimes lacks precision. Could a certain bashfulness linger on? For instance, although the authors once refer to "erotic flagellation" in the context of describing De usu flagrorum [End Page 275] or The Treatise of the Use of Flogging (116), it would be close to impossible to reconstruct from their many references to the work what this little book by Johann Heinrich Meibom, a physician from Lübeck, was all about. (The Protestant doctor discussed the question—it is unclear how seriously—of whether it was licit for a husband to have himself beaten if that was the only way of readying himself for intercourse with his wife.) Similarly, the contents of the surprisingly explicit Treatise of Hermaphrodites, attributed to Giles Jacob and published by Curll in 1718, is summarized in one sentence: "But much of the material is not only explicitly sexual but borderline pornography, cast in the form of romance tales, anecdotal and voyeuristic narratives of lesbian adventures with a sprinkling of cross-dressing and sex toys" (117). This is 100 percent more information than offered in the previous book, but why balk at explaining something of the tales and anecdotes? Historians of gender and sexuality, among others, would surely profit from greater specificity about the content of Curll's publications. Although Baines's and Rogers's book offers a wealth of valuable research on Edmund Curll and in every important respect outdistances the 1927 book on this controversial eighteenth-century literary figure, a reader might question whether it was really primarily graft, desire to make money, that animated Edmund Curll. Despite three clearly positive references to Curll (that he helped the poet Pattison, was not unduly spiteful, and was careful and learned in his antiquarian pursuits), the overwhelming attitude of this new biography reinforces the dismissive disdain of the earlier book: that...