Soho Typescripts: handmade obscene books in post-war London bookshops

Abstract

ABSTRACTSoho Typescripts were a distinctive type of handmade pornography associated with London’s Soho in the 1950s and 1960s. Thousands were produced, but only a proportion survive today. This article presents the first dedicated study of Soho Typescripts based on examination of 50 typescripts from the British Library, a private collection and recent acquisitions by the Museum of London. The article summarizes their distinguishing characteristics and discusses their circulation within an alternative economy regulated though informal alliances between bookshop owners and police. Retail innovations allowed a widening cross-section of men to purchase illustrated home-produced books from post-war bookshops. Retailers positioned Soho Typescripts within a spatial hierarchy, categorizing them with folk-sexological labels: ‘Fladge’, ‘Straight’, ‘B/W’, ‘Les’ and ‘Fem Dom’. Common themes of typescript fiction included teenage girls, lesbianism, sadomasochism and interracial sex. Soho Typescripts are under-represented in institutional collections. Consequently, the significance and reach of these hand-crafted commercial products may have been underestimated.