The Private Case

Omitted by reason of space from Patrick Kearney's 1981 catalogue of the British Library's erotica collection were all those books which had been desegregated - removed - from the Private Case, and shelved elsewhere in the Library with different and less restrictive pressmarks. This new work seeks to rectify this lacuna by providing descriptions of more than 950 works that in earlier times were thought sufficiently offensive to be hidden away from Readers in the Library. The original and current pressmarks are provided, and an addendum is provided that includes a listing of more than fifty works added to the Private Case after publication of the original 1981 catalogue. The work is preceded by a lengthy Introduction by Kearney expanding on the history of the Private Case and describing the problems created by the desegregation of so many of its books . . ." Reviewing Kearney's 1981 volume in the TLS, Timothy d'Arch Smith wrote: "This is not a book of tittle-tattle and on dits . . . Mr Kearney, firing from both barrels, demolishes pseudonyms like a cowboy smashing bottles in a bar-room, and woven in his staid bibliographical canvas is a host of colourful figures, shorn of their aliases: authors, publishers, illustrators, booksellers, who have had a hand in this bizarre trade almost since the invention of moveable types.