Harry Sidney Nichols (14 August 1865 – 30 November 1941) was an English publisher of erotica.
Nichols was born in Wortley, Leeds, Yorkshire, the son of glass merchant William Nichols and his wife, Mary Hartley Nichols. [1] He went into business as antiquarian book dealer, but he made his fortune as a Sheffield publisher and printer of high-end erotica in partnership with Leonard Smithers which included such works as Sir Richard Francis Burton's translation of the Book of One Thousand and One Nights . In 1888 they formed the Erotika Biblion Society, for which Smithers acted as printer. [2] [3] [4] Under threat of arrest under strict Victorian pornography laws, Nichols went into exile in Paris from 1900 to 1908, publishing by mail-order to England. [5]
In 1908, Nichols, being threatened with extradition to England, migrated to Stamford, Connecticut, New York City. His mistress, Annie (renamed 'Dolly'), pregnant with twin daughters, Aimee and Marcia, followed him shortly [6] . Nichols continued to publish erotica until 1939, when he was committed to Bellevue Mental Hospital, where he died in 1941. [7]
One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern folktales compiled in the Arabic language during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English-language edition, which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment.
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, KCMG, FRGS, was a British explorer, writer, scholar and military officer. He was famed for his travels and explorations in Asia, Africa and South America, as well as his extensive knowledge of languages and cultures, speaking up to 29 different languages.
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His black ink drawings were influenced by Japanese woodcuts, and depicted the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler. Beardsley's contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau and poster styles was significant despite his early death from tuberculosis. He is one of the important Modern Style figures.
Henry Spencer Ashbee was a book collector, writer and bibliographer. He is notable for his massive, clandestine three-volume bibliography of erotic literature published under the pseudonym of Pisanus Fraxi.
William Forsell Kirby was an English entomologist and folklorist.
Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal is a pornographic novel, first published in London in 1893. The authorship of the work is unknown. There is a consensus that it was an ensemble effort, but it has often been attributed to Oscar Wilde. Set in fin de siècle Paris, its concerns are the magnetic attraction and passionate though ultimately tragic affair between a young Frenchman named Camille Des Grieux and the Hungarian pianist René Teleny. The novel is one of the earliest pieces of English-language pornography that focuses explicitly and near-exclusively on homosexuality. Its lush and literate, though variable, prose style and the relative complexity and depth of character and plot development share as much with the aesthetic fiction of the period as with its typical pornography.
Isabel Burton, later known as Lady Burton, was an English writer, explorer and adventurer. She was the wife and partner of the explorer, adventurer, and writer Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890).
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1888), subtitled A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, is the only complete English language translation of One Thousand and One Nights to date – a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age – by the British explorer and Arabist Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890). It stands as the only complete translation of the Macnaghten or Calcutta II edition of the "Arabian Nights".
Valenti Angelo (1897-1982) was an Italian-American printmaker, illustrator and author, born June 23, 1897, in Massarosa, Italy. He immigrated to the United States, living first in New York City then settling in Antioch, California. At the age of nineteen, Angelo moved to San Francisco, working by day as a labourer and spending his evenings and weekends at libraries and museums. He soon became a versatile artist and an especially skilled engraver and printer. Angelo's favoured medium was the linocut, and his prints depicting urban nocturnes and desert scenes of the American Southwest are particularly coveted by collectors and dealers. In 1926, Angelo made his first book illustrations for the well-known, San Francisco-based Grabhorn Press.
Charles Carrington (1857–1921) was a leading British publisher of erotica in late-19th- and early-20th-century Europe. Born Paul Harry Ferdinando in Bethnal Green, England on 11 November 1867, he moved in 1895 from London to Paris where he published and sold books in the rue Faubourg Montmartre and rue de Chateaudun; for a short period he moved his activities to Brussels. Carrington also published works of classical literature, including the first English translation of Aristophanes' "Comedies," and books by famous authors such as Oscar Wilde and Anatole France, in order to hide his "undercover" erotica publications under a veil of legitimacy. His books featured the erotic art of Martin van Maële. He published a French series La Flagellation a Travers le Monde mainly on English flagellation, identifying it as an English predilection.
Leonard Charles Smithers was a London bookseller and publisher associated with the Decadent movement of the late 19th century.
Gregory Dexter was a renowned printer of important and controversial books and pamphlets in London. In New England, he assumed various roles including serving as a consultant to printers, a Baptist minister, an owner of a limestone quarry, and a political figure elected as president of the combined towns of Providence and Warwick in colonial Rhode Island. He is best known as the printer of Roger Williams's book A Key into the Language of America in 1643, the first English translation of a Native American language.
The Erotika Biblion Society General of London and New York was a pornographic publishing imprint in Victorian London formed by Harry Sidney Nichols and Leonard Smithers in 1888.
Edward Avery was an English publisher of pornography. His notable publications include The Whippingham Papers, including poems by Algernon Charles Swinburne, and a pirated edition of Sir Richard Burton's Kama Sutra. He was an associate of William Lazenby and Leonard Smithers.
William Lazenby was an English publisher of pornography active in the 1870s and 1880s. He used the aliases Duncan Cameron and Thomas Judd. His notable publications include magazines The Pearl, which published poems thought to have been written by Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Oyster, The Boudoir and The Cremorne He also published such books as The Romance of Lust, Randiana, or Excitable Tales, The Birchen Bouquet (1881), The Romance of Chastisement (1883), The Pleasures of Cruelty (1886) and The Sins of the Cities of the Plain. He was an associate of Edward Avery and Leonard Smithers. He was prosecuted in 1871 and again in 1881.
The Rodiad is a pornographic poem on the subject of flagellation published by John Camden Hotten in 1871, although falsely dated to 1810. It was falsely ascribed when printed to George Colman the Younger. Its author was Richard Monckton Milnes. Henderson places it in The Library Illustrative of Social Progress published around 1872 but it is not in the list of Henry Spencer Ashbee.
Thomas Moundeford M.D. (1550–1630) was an English academic and physician, President of the London College of Physicians for three periods.
Translations of One Thousand and One Nights have been made into most of the world's major languages. They include the French translation by Antoine Galland. Galland's translation was essentially based on a medieval Arabic manuscript of Syrian origin, supplemented by oral tales recorded by him in Paris from Hanna Diyab, a Maronite Arab from Aleppo.
Albert Letchford (1866–1905) was an English artist who lived in Italy, best known for his portraits of Sir Richard Francis Burton and his illustrations for the 1897 edition of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night.
Erotic fiction is a part of erotic literature and a genre of fiction that portrays sex or sexual themes, generally in a more literary or serious way than the fiction seen in pornographic magazines. It sometimes includes elements of satire or social criticism. Such works have frequently been banned by the government or religious authorities. Non-fictional works that portray sex or sexual themes may contain fictional elements. Calling an erotic book 'a memoir' is a literary device that is common in this genre. For reasons similar to those that make pseudonyms both commonplace and often deviously set up, the boundary between fiction and non-fiction is broad.