The Flash Press: Sporting Male Weeklies in 1840s New York

by Patricia Cline Cohen, Timothy J. Gilfoyle, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz

Obscene, libidinous, loathsome, lascivious. Those were just some of the ways critics described the nineteenth-century weeklies that covered and publicized New York City’s extensive sexual underworld. Publications like the Flash and the Whip —distinguished by a captivating brew of lowbrow humor and titillating gossip about prostitutes, theater denizens, and sporting events—were not the sort generally bound in leather for future reference, and despite their popularity with an enthusiastic readership, they quickly receded into almost complete obscurity. Recently, though, two sizable collections of these papers have resurfaced, and in The Flash Press three renowned scholars provide a landmark study of their significance as well as a wide selection of their ribald articles and illustrations.

 

Including short tales of urban life, editorials on prostitution, and moralizing rants against homosexuality, these selections epitomize a distinct form of urban journalism . Here, in addition to providing a thorough overview of this colorful reportage, its editors, and its audience, the authors examine nineteenth-century ideas of sexuality and freedom that mixed Tom Paine’s republicanism with elements of the Marquis de Sade’s sexual ideology. They also trace the evolution of censorship and obscenity law, showing how a string of legal battles ultimately led to the demise of the flash editors were hauled into court, sentenced to jail for criminal obscenity and libel, and eventually pushed out of business. But not before they forever changed the debate over public sexuality and freedom of expression in America’s most important city.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History

278 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 2008

About the author

Patricia Cline Cohen is Professor of History and Acting Dean of the Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara. From 1991 to 1996 she chaired the Women's Studies Program there. She is the author of A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America (1985) and of numerous articles and reviews, and a coauthor of The American Promise (1997).

Reviews

[Emma Hejlik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Forgor to review but solid book and loved the inclusion of annotated primary sources at the end

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but too much plain-vanilla narrative and too many questionable judgments.

This is a short study of four underground New York papers -- the Flash, the Whip, the Rake, and the Libertine -- that ran in New York City between 1841 and 1843. They were published primarily by William J. Snelling, George Washington Dixon, George Wilkes, George B. Wooldridge, and Thaddeus W. Meighan.

The authors never really establish the larger significance of the sexual underground they describe here. They see the flash press's obscene-libel trials as precedent for the upholding of later obscenity laws, but they don't show an actual trail between the two. Also, they never really establish that anything was especially "republican" about the "libertine republicanism" they see in these papers, which is a curious and striking flaw.

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

The authors have managed to turn this subject into a dry dissertation. Perhaps too many cooks? Incredibly well-researched, an interesting topic, but the original materials are the best part of the book.

[Delilah Marvelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best part of this book was the actual newspaper snippets themselves. Too many parts of this book were a bit dry for my taste, more like a dissertation from a college paper, but the information in it was priceless and well worth reading for that alone.

[Victory Wong]

I read about this in the village voice. It looks hilarious and interesting...