'no Question Of Literature' In Vizetelly's Case

By Author: Shirley Green
Total Articles: 129
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As one might expect, some 'literary men' bridled at the law's demonstration of its power to decide what literature was and was not, and questioned its right to do so. For instance, the esteemed critic Edmund Gosse (1849-1928), to whom Zola was 'one of the leading men of genius in the second half of the nineteenth century' sneered that Edward Clarke was 'a lawyer and not a litterateur'. Ernest Vizetelly levelled a similar objection when, petitioning the Home Secretary for his father's release, he derided the jurors at the second trial as 'a dozen small tradesmen... wholly unacquainted with Replica Tag Heuer Carrera literature' who were thus unaware that the 'books incriminated... have been praised by eminent literary critics as being works of art of a very high order'. To counter the accusation that it advocated philistinism, the NVA issued a response which conceded, perhaps unexpectedly, that 'a jury are [sic] not capable of defining indecency'. But it then asked: Who is And who, on the other hand, can define literature

However, the controversy over ...
... Vizetelly's translations shows that the accepted test for 'literature' was rather like the legal test for 'obscenity'. In the post-1870 context of an enlarged readership, it depended, like indecency, primarily on questions of audience, not questions of content. The general response of 'literary men' to Vizetelly's convictions was therefore quieter than one might have predicted. As the widespread suspicion of the Education Act's effect on literary production suggests, many authors actually shared the NVA's undemocratic assumptions about Tag Heuer Replica Watches the contemporary reading public. George Gissing, for example, wrote that he opposed the translation... of Zola into English, seeing that everyone, without exception, capable of reading him as literature would take the trouble to read him in French, and only those who sought pornography would fall on the English version.

It is no surprise that when Ernest Vizetelly urged 'men of letters' to sign a petition condemning the 'censorship' of 'literary masterpieces', Gissing did not offer his name. Though his resentment of the circulating libraries' power to sanitise English fiction suggests that he believed in literary freedom, the novelist like the lawyer Edward Clarke evidently saw 'no question of literature' in Vizetelly's case. Gissing's scorn for Zola translations echoed the strident counsel of the NVA, which had advised that if a man must read them let him learn French. He probably had some motive beyond catching up what indecency he could, or he would not take the trouble to learn the language.