[lit-ideas] The Sect of the Phoenix
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 10:56:57 EDT
A GENTLEMAN'S EDUCATION" - What more besides the bound copies of "Hound and
Horse_?
"THE EROTOMANIAC"
---
S. Ward:
"I'd love to reply to this message, but it would give everything away ...
Instead, I refer you to Ian Gibson's The Erotomaniac: The Secret Life of Henry
Spencer Ashbee. A superb example of literary detection that nobody would
admit to reading. It's very good (so I'm told by myself) and claims to finger
Ashbee (as the author of 'My Secret Life')."
Interesting. I should get that book. I was consulting what Kearney has to
say in his "History of Erotic Literature".
"Through his friend James Campbell Reddie, himself a writer of pornography,
Ashbee was acquainted with many of those involved in the trade." Kearney
also mentions the names of the bookseller Dugdale and Avery (compiler).
Particulary with Reddie being an author, I suppose Gibson must engage in a
lot of literary detection.
Kearney refers to three books by Ashbee:
"Index librorum prohibitorum, being notes bio-biblio-iconographical and
critical on curous an duncommon books, by Pisanus Fraxi. London: 1877, repr.
New
York: Jack Brussel, 1962).
"Centuria librorum absconditorum". London 1879, repr. JB 1962
Catena librorum Tacendorum. London: 1885, JB 1962.
I think it's about time Penguin Modern Classics have it in one of those big
elephantine editions of theirs.
Other books on erotica I have do not make the Ashbee/My Secret Life
connection, though, but I take your word, Simon.
Yesterday, I received my copy of "Satyricon" by Petronius. The editor says
that its role is 'decreasing in the education of a gentleman' but quotes a
delightful letter 1789 commending the volume.
What interests me is that these were gentleman's gentleman's readings, as it
were -- where the British matron was explicitly excluded. There were books
that _gentlemen_ -- and not students of literature like Margaret Drabble, MA
Eng.Lit -- who enjoyed them. It would be anathema to think for these gentlemen
that Cliff or Coles would be making money out "Notes on MY SECRET LIFE".
I prefer the idea of a 'gentleman's education' to that rather puerile idea
of the Greeks of the British boy and the hoop, "enkyklios paideia' ("round-up
learning, or rear-up" (As Jaeger notes, in his PAIDEIA, the word was initially
merely used literary for 'boy-rearing' or education of the pais.
The Victorians were keen on "boy's" -- as in "The boy's King of Arthur", and
the Edwardians later with their "Boy's Own (annual) or paper". So they did
make a distinction between the minor (boy) and the gentleman -- but
'gentleman's education' should include everything in the _boy_'s education --
for a boy
was supposed to grow to be a gentleman.
Cheers,
JL
J. L. Speranza,
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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