University of Virginia Library

Libertine Literature

The return to the British Museum brought a sense of anti-climax.
There was talk of Foxon's being given time to complete his catalogue,
but it never materialized. Indeed, the next serious step towards completion
was delayed until Foxon left the Museum in 1965. Nevertheless,
this period saw the publication of four important articles in the Book
Collector in 1963 as a result of the accidental discovery of an advertisement
for The School of Venus, or the Lady's Delight in the Daily Advertiser
for 25 August 1744. Foxon recognized this as a reference to
L'École des Filles, a French pornographic work referred to in English
literature but with no known English translation. The discovery that
there had been a translation set off an enquiry into early English pornographic
publications, their continental antecedents, and finally, in an article
requested by John Hayward, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
and Fanny Hill. The essays were subsequently issued together as Libertine
Literature in England, 1660-1745, and then published, with an

introduction by Foxon, in the United States in 1965. This was a pioneering
exercise in the scholarly history and bibliography of pornography,
and one still referred to today.[21] Using legal records, advertisements,
and bibliographical and literary analysis, Foxon was able to show the
patterns of diffusion of the texts and estimate their potential importance
as historical sources. Publication of articles on such a subject, even ones
as scholarly as Foxon's, was still regarded as daring, and one distinguished
bibliographer warned Foxon that it would ruin his career. But
Foxon's period in psychoanalysis, and a short research visit to the Kinsey
Institute during his time in the States, gave him confidence to pursue
these intellectual puzzles like any others encountered in his work, and
Hayward, who was the editor of Rochester, encouraged him. Publication
was timely, for it coincided with the new freedom in sexuality recorded
wistfully by Philip Larkin in his `Annus Mirabilis':

Although Foxon had no programme of liberation in mind, he was bibliography's
representative in this historical shift, and the measured tone
of his writing goes alongside a conviction that old hypocrisies must be
blown away and new moral judgements made.

In Libertine Literature Foxon interprets the advertisement for The
School of Venus as a clue to a hidden vein of English culture. It had
been assumed there had been no pornography in the seventeenth century,
except for Rochester, and that the first legal proceedings had been
against Curll in 1727. Foxon argues that, on the contrary, there had
been rapid importation of French pornography and a willingness to
risk prosecution. The first chapter is informed by his visits to the Public
Record Office during his lunch hours and lists government actions
against pornography from 1660 to 1745. He paints a lively picture of
the trade in pornography by printers, publishers, and hawkers, with a
particularly telling glimpse of the Brett family, who sent out their
children to buy `The Complete Set of the Charts of Merryland' and
The School of Venus for selling on to customers, and of George Spavan,
who made a guinea a week from sales of The School of Venus alone. The

account of gentleman purchasers includes Pepys, Wycherley, Learnerd,
and Ravenscroft, but perhaps the most amusing episode is the attempt
of the gentlemen of All Souls to print Aretine's Postures at the University
Press. Sadly for the young gentlemen, Dean Fell turned up unexpectedly
and confiscated the prints and plates; about sixty prints had
already been distributed `but Mr. Dean hath made them call them in
again and commit them to the fire' (1964 edn., 7).

from Aretine onwards, while the third, on Satyra Sotadica and Vénus
dans le cloitre, examines a series of translations of the former, including
a `sucker-trap' from that most respectable of booksellers, Jacob Tonson.
In the final chapter, on Fanny Hill, Foxon tells the story of its prosecution,
printing a letter from its author Cleland for the first time, and
then, partly on the basis of ornament evidence, clarifies the bibliography
of the early editions. He shows that the version with the sodomitical
episode is the first, and it was on this understanding of the textual history
that Peter Sabor was later to base his edition for Oxford University
Press in 1985. The proposal in the late sixties that Foxon should himself
edit the text for the Oxford Novels series was turned down on the
grounds that the time was not yet ripe.