108
STEVEN MARCUS
President Grant, lay just below my rooms.... I knew
him
very well,
and certainly never supposed from his quiet manner that he would reach
his present position." In 1854 Hotten made his way back to England–
the autobiographical fragment ends here-and in 1855, Ashbee tells us,
he began business "in a very small shop, No. 151b Piccadilly, directly
opposite the larger establishment which acquired a world wide renown
under his rule." He soon became successful, and at the time of his death
in 1873 had placed himself, according to the obituary tribute of a
friend, "at the very summit of his calling." "A modest tombstone," in
Highgate Cemetery, Ashbee writes, "was erected to his memory by the
London booksellers."
Hotten's character is sufficiently revealed to us. by his memorializ–
ing friend . "During the last eight years he occupied a position as
publisher second to none in the trade. His acuteness in feeling the
pulse of the bookmarket, in gauging the public taste, and supplying
it with exactly the sort of literary pabulum it required, was truly
extraordinary." Whether or not we agree with the idea that porno–
graphy is a species of breakfast cereal, there is no doubt that Hotten
pursued his occupation with energy and vigor. Indeed, concludes his
friend: "His fertile brain seemed never to be at rest. He overtasked
it, and it has at last given way under the strain." This may be the
first recorded instance of death caused by brain fever brought on by
pornography; on the other hand, one wonders whether he ever fully
recovered from that beaning he got from Macaulay.
Out of a number of examples I have chosen three to illustrate
Hotten's dealings. In 1865 Hotten reprinted Richard Payne Knight's
famous
A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus.
First published
in
1786, this work is antiquarian in kind, and may be thought of as
proto-archeology or proto-anthropology. Although the first printing of
this book could not have been large, Knight came in for a certain
amount of strong criticism for writing publicly on such a subject and
seems to have made an effort to suppress or recall as many volumes
as he could. Ashbee himself appears not to have owned a copy of
it, since he notes that a copy of the original edition is to be found
"in the reserved library of the British Museum," the same institution
to which Knight, on his death in 1824, bequeathed that "collection
of antiquities, which became the pride of his life," and which
his
large personal fortune had enabled him to amass-there is a tradi·
tion for these things. Hotten's reprinting has added to it another essay,
longer than Knight's, and entitled
An Essay on the Worship of
the
Generative P.owers During the Middle Ages 'Of Western Europe.
This
work, Ashbee informs us, is "from the pen of Mr. Thomas
Wrigh~
