Name/Title
Edmund Wilson's books - July 9, 1946Entry/Object ID
002317Tags
Edmund WilsonScope and Content
This newspaper clipping, dated Tuesday, July 9, 1946, reports on the seizure of Edmund Wilson’s book of short stories, Memoirs of Hecate County, by the New York City police.
The key details of the incident are as follows:
The Seizure
The Action: Plainclothes officers entered four Doubleday Book Shops in Manhattan and confiscated 130 copies of the book.
The Authority: The raids were conducted under a search warrant issued at the request of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.
The Allegation: John S. Sumner, executive secretary of the society, labeled the book "salacious and lascivious" and a violation of Section 1141 of the State Penal Law. He famously called it the "most objectionable book" he had ever read for public circulation.
Legal & Commercial Impact
Summonses Issued: Legal action was taken against representatives of the publisher, Doubleday & Co., and the individual bookstores.
Popularity: Despite the controversy (or perhaps because of it), the book was a best-seller at the time, with over 50,000 copies already sold.
Critical Reception: While the Vice Society condemned it, the article notes that most critics regarded it as a "serious literary work," even if reviews were mixed. The New York Times described it as a "disjointed sequence of murky, suburban-Gothic tales."
Key Locations & Figures
Police Stations: Confiscated books were taken to the West 54th and East 51st Street stations.
Store Locations: Raids occurred at 112 Lexington Ave, 526 Lexington Ave, the Vanderbilt Avenue Concourse (Grand Central Terminal), and 670 Fifth Ave.
The Author: Edmund Wilson, then a literary critic for The New Yorker, was unavailable for comment as he was vacationing in Cape Cod.