Memoirs of Hecate County

First edition

Memoirs of Hecate County is a work of fiction by Edmund Wilson, first published in 1946, but banned in the United States until 1959, when it was reissued with minor revisions by the author.

Although it is sometimes described as a novel, the only link between the six stories is the narrator.

1. The Man Who Shot Snapping Turtles. First published in Atlantic Monthly.
2. Ellen Terhune. First published in Partisan Review.
3. Glimpses of Wilbur Flick. First published in Town & Country.
4. The Princess with the Golden Hair. Novella.
5. The Milhollands and their Damned Soul.
6. Mr and Mrs Blackburn at Home.

Censorship

The book was published by Doubleday in March 1946, and about 60,000 copies were sold. In July, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice lodged a complaint, and 130 copies were seized from four bookstores owned by Doubleday and from the New York Public Library. The ban was challenged by the publisher, but upheld by 2–1, the dissenter being Nathan D. Perlman.^[1][2]

The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948, where the decision was upheld 4–4 after the disqualification of Felix Frankfurter. The book was no longer sold in the United States, but was published in the United Kingdom by W. H. Allen in June 1951, going through six impressions in just two years.

Throughout the 1950s there was intense public debate about the censorship of literary works, and in 1958 the publication of Lolita (by Wilson's friend Nabokov) demonstrated the extent to which public attitudes had relaxed. In June 1959, Memoirs of Hecate County was republished in New York by Octagon and L. C. Page. This revised edition appeared in the United Kingdom in March 1960, published by Panther.

References

1. "Many Shops Halt Seized Book Sale" New York Times, July 10, 1946.
2. " 'Hecate' Obscene; Publisher Is Fined" New York Times, November 28, 1946.

• Richard Hixson. Pornography and the Justices: The Supreme Court and the Intractable Obscenity Problem.