Founding Feminist Fights Sexual Rights Censorship--H.L. Mencken's Copy (1926)

JF Ptak Science Books 

Mary Ware Dennett, Feminist and social rights activist (1872-1947, active at high levels in the Twilight Sleep Association (advocating the use of drugs to relieve pain during childbirth and lessen the need for forceps), the National American Women's Suffrage Association, National Birth Control League, Voluntary Parenthood League, and other groups, generally advocating in pretty forceful ways for the rights of women, sex education, planned parenthood, and peace movements).

[Untitled Document], 11x8.5",  38 leaves, 1926, unbound. Provenance: H.L. Mencken's copy, which he donated to the Library of Congress in January 1938.  Very Good condition, except for the first leaf which shows signs of dusting; also, there is a small, perforated "LC" at leaf bottom, and a Library of Congress surplus duplicate rubbed stamp on the back of the same first leaf.  There is no telling (by me) how many copies of this document were printed. I've checked WorldCat (which shows several titles by Dennett regarding her obscenity case (including the wonderfully-titled "Who's Obscene?") and there seems to be no record of this present work.   $1350

Dennett wrote this document defending herself and her publication The Sex Side of Life (1915) from censorship issues derived from the Comstock Act, 1925.  This is addressed to Postmaster General Harry S. New in response to the Solicitor of the Post Office's refusal to mail the pamphlet, finding it obscene under the obscenity statue, Section 211 of the Federal Penal Code, and dated May 26, 1925.   

Mary Ware Dennett may well have become a major social rights activist of necessity, trying to provide for her family, working outside the home, needing an income after having been abandoned by her husband. She was.  In any event in the cause of educating her children on sexual/love education for the lack of anything published on the subject. She wound up publishing the pamphlet to much acclaim and success, the work appearing first in 1918 in the Medical Review of Reviews. It was evidently a solid work, and was received well at nearly every level by the medical profession, many of the clergy, and social groups of all manner.  Dennett documents the pamphlet's reception with testimonials from pp 3-23, starting with an appreciation from Havelock Ellis. From pp 24-38 Dennett reproduces the correspondence about her case with the Post Office with the PO solicitors from 1922 through 1926

In the May, 1926 issue of The American Mercury, Mencken wrote: "There is, of course, nothing indecent in that pamphlet; on the contrary, it is notably prudent and clean. The author wrote it for the instruction of her own young sons, and its superiority to most other such literature was so apparent that it was reprinted at length in a medical journal, and circulated in great numbers by clergymen, Y.M.C.A. secretaries, social workers, and other such chemically pure persons. This went on for four and a half years. Then Mrs. Dennett, who is engaged in birth-control propaganda, began annoying the wowsers of the U.S. Post Office by exposing their gross stupidity and disingenuousness in the enforcement of the Comstock Act, and they retorted by barring her pamphlet from the mails. No plainer case of the use of an idiotic law to punish an inconvenient critic could be imagined"--Wiki

"Eventually a safe jury (12 middle aged men) was empanelled by the prosecution “and Mrs. Dennett was quickly convicted, and Judge Burrows fined her $300. . . . Six months later the Circuit Court of Appeals, consisting of [Thomas Walker?] Swan, Augustus Noble Hand and Chase, JJ, set aside the verdict, decided that the pamphlet was so obviously not obscene that ‘no case was made for submission to the jury,’ and ordered Mrs. Dennett released from her bond.”

"When the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned her conviction in 1930, the Court set a legal precedent that took intent into account in the evaluation of obscenity. Dennett's trial was part of a series of rulings that culminated in the 1936 ruling in United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries, which exempted birth control information and materials used by physicians from obscenity laws."--Wiki

"During the 1920s, Mary Ware Dennett challenged government officials and the laws they sought to enforce in an effort to legalize the dissemination of birth control and sex education materials through the mail. Dennett's anticensorship campaign established an important precedent and brought the sex education debate out into the open."-- "The Sex Side of Life": The Obscenity Case of Mary Ware Dennett", J. Craig, Frontiers, vol 15, 1995.  See also: Melissa J. Doak,  How did the debate between Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett shape the movement to legalize birth control, 1915-1924?, SUNY, 2000.