Pornography & the Law — Eberhard & Phyllis Kronhausen

Full Title: Pornography & the Law: The Psychology of Erotic Realism and Pornography
Eberhard Kronhausen & Phyllis Kronhausen
Foreword by J. W. Ehrlich · Introduction by Theodor Reik
Ballantine Books, Inc. · New York · 1959
First Edition · First Printing

The Book:
The First Edition · First Printing of Eberhard and Phyllis Kronhausen’s Pornography and the Law, a contemporary psychological and legal challenge to American obscenity regulation. Published only two years after Roth v. United States reshaped the Supreme Court’s obscenity doctrine, the Kronhausens argued for a distinction between “hard-core pornography” and “erotic realism”—sexually candid literature with psychological, artistic, or social value. Their examples include D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, James Joyce, Rabelais, Casanova, and the Marquis de Sade. 315 numbered pages plus preliminary material. Original Ballantine mass-market wrappers retain publication number S346K, the 75¢ price, and the publisher’s repeated declaration that the book was “AN ORIGINAL” and “not a reprint.”

Condition:
Very Good. Original wrappers remain complete with moderate rubbing and handling wear, several minor edge defects, and a small area of loss at the foot of the spine. Paper is uniformly and noticeably toned, as expected for the inexpensive stock used in this mass-market edition. Binding remains square and sound; contents are complete and generally clean. No significant ownership markings, rebinding, restoration, or replacement components documented.

Story Of The Book

In 1959, American courts were wrestling with a deceptively simple question: when does sexually explicit writing become illegal?

Eberhard and Phyllis Kronhausen entered that fight as psychologists. Their argument challenged the idea that a book could be judged merely by how sexually explicit—or offensive—it appeared. They drew a distinction between pornography created principally for sexual stimulation and what they called “erotic realism”: serious literature that dealt candidly with sex but also possessed artistic, psychological, or social value.

That distinction put some of the most frequently censored writers of the century at the center of the discussion: D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, James Joyce, and the Marquis de Sade, among others. And this was not theoretical history. As the Kronhausens were writing, the unexpurgated American edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover was itself being challenged by the Post Office. Contemporary legal commentary treated the book as part of the urgent debate over whether sexually explicit expression could possess enough social value to deserve constitutional protection.

The question was never simply whether the material was sexual. It was who had the authority to decide when sexuality made a book forbidden.

Why It’s In The Collection

Pornography and the Law belongs in Consigned to Darkness because censorship often begins with a definition.

If the state can define sexually explicit expression as obscene, then enormous power rests in deciding what counts as obscenity—and what counts as literature, art, scholarship, or legitimate human experience.

The Kronhausens tried to narrow that boundary. Their argument appeared while American obscenity law was still unsettled, while Lady Chatterley’s Lover was still being fought over, and before many of the century’s major literary censorship battles had been resolved.

This first printing therefore preserves not the aftermath of those battles, but one argument being made from inside them.

The book asks a question at the center of this collection: when authority calls something obscene, who gets the final word?

Collection Categories: Publication-Event Object · Free Expression · Censorship · Sexuality & Culture · Legal History · Civil Liberties · Literature · Obscenity Law & Court History

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Authentication Evidence

• Title page identifies the work as Pornography and the Law: The Psychology of Erotic Realism and Pornography by Eberhard and Phyllis Kronhausen.

• Title page identifies Ballantine Books · New York as publisher.

• Title-page verso explicitly states “This is an original publication—not a reprint—Published by Ballantine Books, Inc.”

• Front wrapper carries Ballantine’s “AN ORIGINAL” designation.

• Front wrapper carries Ballantine publication number S346K.

• Original 75¢ price remains present on the front wrapper.

• Rear wrapper again explicitly states “THIS IS AN ORIGINAL PUBLICATION—NOT A REPRINT.”

• Rear wrapper identifies the volume as printed in the United States.

• Copyright page records © 1959 by Eberhard Kronhausen.

• Copyright page identifies the volume as the 1st Edition.

• Independent bibliographic records identify the 1959 Ballantine publication as the First Edition.

• Bibliographic records document later printings of the first edition, including a third printing in 1961, establishing that multiple impressions existed.

• Cornell University’s Human Sexuality Collection bibliography records Pornography and the Law as New York: Ballantine Books, 1959, paperback.

• Independent bibliographic records identify Ballantine S346K as the original 1959 publication.

• Contemporary Yale Law Journal review identifies the book by Eberhard and Phyllis Kronhausen, with an introduction by Theodor Reik, as a 1959 Ballantine publication of approximately 317 pages priced at 75¢, matching this copy’s bibliographic characteristics.

• Contemporary Mattachine Review material from October 1959 identifies the book as a new Ballantine publication priced at 75¢ and reproduces material from the volume, independently confirming publication-period circulation.

• Contents include a foreword by J. W. Ehrlich and an introduction by Dr. Theodor Reik, consistent with contemporary bibliographic descriptions.

• Bibliography occupies pages 293–304.

• Index extends through page 315.

• Original Ballantine wrappers remain present.

• No evidence of later-edition substitution, facsimile manufacture, replacement wrappers, rebinding, or restoration is observed.

• The combination of the stated “1st Edition,” Ballantine “AN ORIGINAL” designation, original S346K wrapper state, original 75¢ price, and independently documented later printings supports identification as the 1959 First Edition · First Printing.