Henry Spencer Ashbee

Henry Spencer Ashbee (21 April 1834 – 29 July 1900) was a book collector, writer, and bibliographer, notorious for his massive, clandestine three volume bibliography of erotic literature written under the pseudonym of Pisanus Fraxi.

Life

Ashbee was born in Southwark, London. He was by occupation a textile trader, the senior partner in the London branch of the firm of Charles Lavy & Co.^[1] He travelled extensively during his life, including Europe, Japan, and San Francisco, collaborating with Alexander Graham on Travels in Tunisia, published in 1887. He was an avid book collector, with perhaps the world's most extensive collections of Cervantes and erotica.

Ashbee was a part of a loose intellectual fraternity of English gentlemen who discussed sexual matters with a freedom that was at odds with Victorian mores; this fraternity included Richard Francis Burton, Richard Monckton Milnes, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and others. He also amassed thousands of volumes of pornography in several languages. He wrote on sex under the pseudonyms "Fraxinus" (Ash) and "Apis" (Bee), and sometimes combined them as "Pisanus Fraxi".

Ashbee's will left his entire collection to the British Museum, with the condition that the erotic works had to be accepted along with the conventional items. Because the trustees wanted the materials related to Cervantes, they decided to accept the bequest. The trustees were allowed to destroy any of the books if they had a duplicate, but in practice went much further and destroyed six boxes "of offensive matter which is of no value or interest" including cheaply produced Victorian erotica.^[2] The remainder of the works formed the core of the Private Case which were kept hidden from readers in the British Library for many years; they including a work by William Simpson Potter.^[3]

Ashbee married Elisabeth Lavy^[4] in Hamburg, Germany in 1862. They had one son, Charles (the designer Charles Robert Ashbee, born 1863), and three daughters.^[5] His family life grew unhappier as he aged.^[6] As he became more conservative, his family followed the progressive movement of the era. "The 'excessive education' of his daughters irritated him, his Jewish wife's pro-suffragism infuriated him, and he became tragically estranged from his socialist homosexual son, Charles".^[7] Henry and Elisabeth separated in 1893.^[5]

Books

Ashbee's most famous works were his three bibliographies of erotic works:

• Index Librorum Prohibitorum: being Notes Bio- Biblio- Icono- graphical and Critical, on Curious and Uncommon Books. London, privately printed, 1877. (The name is a reference to the Catholic Church's list of banned books "Index Librorum Prohibitorum").
• Centuria Librorum Absconditorum: being Notes Bio- Icono- graphical and Critical, on Curious and Uncommon Books. London, privately printed, 1879.
• Catena Librorum Tacendorum: being Notes Bio- Icono- graphical and Critical, on Curious and Uncommon Books. London, privately printed, 1885

The Index was arranged by author, the Centuria and Catena by subject. Ashbee includes plot summaries of the works listed, with liberal quotations. Of particular note are the 300 pages of the "Centuria" devoted to anti-Catholic pornography.^[8] Initially only 250 copies of each volume were printed.^[9][10][11]

My Secret Life

Main article: My Secret Life (erotica)

Ashbee is also suspected to be "Walter", the author of My Secret Life, a lengthy sexual memoir of a Victorian gentleman. Gershon Legman was the first to link "Walter" and Ashbee in his introduction to the 1962 reprints of Ashbee's bibliographies; the 1966 Grove Press edition of My Secret Life included an expanded version of that essay.

Influences

A character based on him is central to Sarah Waters's award-winning novel Fingersmith: a man obsessively collecting and indexing pornography and works about human sexuality, in an atmosphere of oppressive Victorian hypocrisy.^[12]

References

1. ^ Steven Marcus (1969) The Other Victorians: 36
2. ^ David Chambers, 'Ashbee, Henry Spencer (1834–1900)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2008, accessed 23 Oct 2011.
3. ^ Costas Douzinas, Lynda Nead, "Law and the image: the authority of art and the aesthetics of law", University of Chicago Press, 1999, ISBN 0226569543, p.212
4. ^ Felicity Ashbee, "Janet Ashbee: love, marriage, and the arts & crafts movement", Syracuse University Press, 2002, ISBN 0815607318, p.15 (photograph of Elisabeth Ashbee by Frank Lloyd Wright)
5. ^ ^{a b} A. James Hammerton, "Cruelty and companionship: conflict in nineteenth-century married life", Routledge, 1992, ISBN 0415036224, pp.144-145
6. ^ Hammerton, A. James (1992). Cruelty and companionship: conflict in nineteenth-century married life. Routledge. pp. 117–121. ISBN 0415036224. 
7. ^ Rachel Holmes, "Sexual intercourse began in 1863..." a review of Gibson's biography, The Observer, 25 February 2001
8. ^ Steven Marcus (1969) The Other Victorians: 34-77
9. ^ Joseph W. Slade, "Pornography and Sexual Representation: A Reference Guide", Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001, ISBN 0313315191, p.107
10. ^ Walter M. Kendrick, "The secret museum: pornography in modern culture", University of California Press, 1996, ISBN 0520207297, p.71
11. ^ Suzanne G. Frayser, Thomas J. Whitby, "Studies in human sexuality: a selected guide", Libraries Unlimited, 1995, ISBN 1563081318, p.615
12. ^ Forman, Ross G. Governing Pleasures: Pornography and Social Change in England, 1815-1914 (review), Victorian Studies 45 (2003) 777-779 doi:10.1353/vic.2004.0015

• Ian Gibson, "The Erotomaniac: The Secret Life of Henry Spencer Ashbee", London: Faber and Faber, 2001, ISBN 0-571-19619-5
• Steven Marcus, "The Other Victorians: a study of sexuality and pornography in mid-nineteenth-Century England", Transaction Publishers, 2008, ISBN 1412808197, chapter 2.
• Henry Spencer Ashbee, also known as "Pisanus Fraxi", Index of Forbidden Books (written 1880s as Index Librorum Prohibitorum), London: Sphere, 1969.

External links

• "Ashbee Bibliography of Prohibited Books 1877-1885;^{[dead link]}

Persondata
Name	Ashbee, Henry Spencer
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	21 April 1834
Place of birth
Date of death	29 July 1900
Place of death