Greenleaf Publishing
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"During the 1960s and 1970s, Earl Kemp was involved in publishing erotic paperbacks through a company, Greenleaf Publishing, where he was employed by William Hamling. In an example of détournement, Kemp published an illustrated edition of the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. According to Pornography and Sexual Representation: A Reference Guide, the book was "replete with the sort of photographs the commission examined." Kemp eventually was sentenced to a one-year prison sentence for distributing the book (as was Hamling). However, both served only the federal minimum of three months and one day. The story of their arrest and prison time was covered in Gay Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife."--Sholem Stein |
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Greenleaf Publishing was a United States publishing house founded by William Hamling. Robert Bonfils was the art director and Earl Kemp at one time edited the Greenleaf Classics imprint.
History
The history of Greenleaf began in 1959 with a meeting between Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison. Silverberg conceived a plan for struggling writers and convinced Ellison to pitch the outline to William Hamling. Nightstand Books resulted from this.
In 1965, the Greenleaf Classics imprint was started to re-issue the works of erotica first published in Europe (primarily by Maurice Girodias's Olympia Press) -- which had fallen into the public domain through international copyright problems. While Greenleaf Classics focused on re-printing these Olympia texts, they also commissioned new works of contemporary erotica by authors such as Thomas Ramirez.
The whole story is told in "Have Typewriter, Will Whore For Food…" by Earl Kemp in eI2, April 2002. The history of the publisher ended when Earl Kemp published the illustrated version of the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography.
Selected bibliography
- Donald H. Gilmore’s Sex, Censorship and Pornography (Greenleaf Classics) ISBN B0006C08FO
- The Illustrated Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography (1970) Greenleaf Classics
See also
