Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- I. A gentle angel -- II. 1857: outrages -- III. The State regulates desire -- IV. Love and literature driven underground -- V. The laboratory of empire -- VI. Counter-campaigns and resistance -- VII. The next generation: Symonds, Whitman, and Wilde -- VIII. The memoirs.

That law was the Obscene Publications Act and it was a crucial turning point. Why? Because dissent and morality; 'deviancy' and 'normalcy'; unprintable and printable were suddenly lawful concepts in the modern sense. This new law effectively invented modern obscenity. Before 1857 it wasn't 'homosexuality' - a term that didn't yet exist - that was a crime, but simply the act of sodomy. But in a single stroke, not only was love between men illegal, but anything referring to this love also became obscene, unprintable, unspeakable. And writers, editors and printers became the gatekeepers with a responsibility to uphold the morals of the society - followed by serious criminal penalties if they didn't. And as the act evolved, joined by other laws against sexual representation and speech, making their way to courts, the authors' or artists' intentions were deemed immaterial. What mattered was if the work in question had a 'tendency... to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall'.