by Michael R. Goss
The Erotic Print Society, London, 2004. Oversized paperback, 153 pages.
There have been several 1st Amendment rights cases that vintage paperback enthusiasts study and quote. In this case, the one in question is Redrup v. New York, which was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 (and would be the last real challenge until Hustler v. Falwell (the Larry Flint case) in 1988). The result of the Redrup case was the finding that what may be pornography to one person, may not be to another. In other words, as a result of this case, virtually ANY book could be published with very little fear of interference by the government. It literally opened the floodgates to unlimited "Adult Literature." This book is about the books that followed.
They were lewd and lascivious, to put it mildly. Pornographic? Not by everyone's standards (according to the new interpretation of the constitution), but most people would have to wonder. Anything, and by that I mean everything, was rushed into print. Such thought-provoking titles as Horny Schoolgirls Have Fun, The Nun and the Choirboy, The Horny Babysitter, and Lesbian Nurse in the Girls' Ward, to name only a few. (There are many, many more titles highlighted in the book that I refuse to list here.) Incest, bestiality, sodomy ... the more outrageous the better. This, obviously, goes a bit beyond what I refer to in this web site as "sleaze," and so I have included very, very few of these cover scans in my Sleaze pages. Even so, this type of literature has tremendous appeal to many collectors.