Vice and censorship: the case of Cabell’s Jurgen
One hundred years ago today … the Jurgen case was called.
James Branch Cabell’s erotic, hallucinatory novel, published in September of 1919, portrays a man who travels through time and has erotic adventures with former lovers and famous historical figures.
Jurgen 1919 dust jacket. Wikicommons.
The novel included illustrations by Frank C. Papé. You can see them all here thanks to Virginia Commonwealth University Library.
Frank C. Papé, from Jurgen (1919). Courtesy Virginia Commonwealth University Library, James Branch Cabell papers.
The book sold well and received positive reviews, but one reader who objected was Walter B. Kingsley, a theater critic (and member of the Cheese Club, which we wrote about on April 24th). In a January 3, 1920 letter to the New York Tribune, he complained about the novel’s “undercurrent of extreme sensuality.” This caught the attention of John Sumner of the New York Society for the Prevention of Vice. On January 14th, Sumner issued a summons to Guy Holt, manager of Robert M. McBride Publishers. Summer charged the publisher with violating Section 1141 of New York’s penal code.
Courtesy Virginia Commonwealth University Library, James Branch Cabell papers.
That day, according to Dawn B. Sova’s Banned Books: Literature Suppressed on Sexual Grounds (2006), vice agents raided the McBride offices and confiscated all plates and typescripts related to the book. At a formal hearing on January 23rd, Vice prosecutors read out page numbers of offending passages, but not passages, as that was deemed to be too racy for court proceedings (126-7).
Appearing in court May 17th, Holt pleaded not guilty.
The New York Times 18 May 1920, p. 9.
The case took two years to resolve; in 1922 the publisher was acquitted and the book cleared for publication.
Source/further reading: Sova, Dawn B. Banned Books: Literature Suppressed on Sexual Grounds. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2006.
WRITTEN BY JONATHAN GOLDMAN, MAY 17, 2020.
TAGS: censorship, obsceniity, erotic literature, vice, John Sumner, Jurgen, James Branch Cabell, Dawn B. Sova