A Purveyor of Garbage? Charles Carrington and the Marketing of Sexual Science in Late-Victorian Britain

[Para. 1]: "On 6 March 1897, The Lancet ran a short piece about a book that had been recently forwarded from Paris for review beating the "innocent" title Untrodden Fields of Anthropology (1896). The review's anonymous author coyly pon dered" in which category" the publisher, Charles Carrington, self-described as a purveyor" of medical, folk-lore and scientific works," would place the volume, before denouncing it as" a record, and a very badly written record, of garbage from the sewers of human nature" ("Purveyor of Garbage" 681)."[The work] has no scientific importance whatever. It is of no interest to a student of human nature or of natural history," the reviewer declared, before threatening to" supply the Paris police with Mr. Carrington's address and... hand over the book with its accompanying prospectus to Her Majesty's Postmaster-General, so that he may... take steps to stay the dissemination of such abominations by the agency of his department"(681). In doing so, the reviewer established Untrodden Fields of Anthropology as" pornography" of" a semi-scientific appearance," a topic that The Lancet addressed frequently throughout the 1890s and early 1900s ("Vile Trade" 468). The journal's editors anxiously hoped that in broadcasting the names of the "men of filth" who trafficked such works, they would save readers from the embarrassment of unwittingly purchasing "lewd" materials and prevent the "unmentionable crime" of blackmail that might result (468)."