FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“A fascinating survey of the long-forgotten ‘flash’ newspapers of the 1840s and of the raucous urban sexual cultures, explosive sexual scandals, and heated debates over sexual liberty and morality those newspapers chronicled, provoked, and lampooned.”
George Chauncey, author of Gay New York

The Flash Press
Sporting Male Weeklies in 1840s New York

Patricia Cline Cohen, Timothy J. Gilfoyle, and Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz,
in association with the American Antiquarian Society

If you think you’ve had your fill of malicious gossip, sex as a route to celebrity, and relentless sports and entertainment news, you might just be reading all about it two centuries too late. Under such headlines as “Whoredome in New York” and “Philadelphia Pimps of Fame,” New York’s 1840s flash papers served up with nonpareil style and irresistible wit all the news that wasn’t fit to print about the city’s underworld of brothels, wantons, unfortunate girls, and their all-too-eager customers. Ephemeral publications that also featured gossip about boxing, dog fighting, and the theater scene, the Rake, the Flash, the Whip, and the Libertine were must-reads for sporting men keen to learn about the city’s leisure activities and erotic entertainments. Now, for the first time since their long-forgotten heyday, these papers are once again in printłthis time taking the more discrete form of a book that looks under Victorian-era New York’s buttoned-up surface to reveal the colorful (read: more interesting) characters teeming beneath.

Featuring a thorough overview of the papersłtwo sizable collections of which have recently resurfacedłand a wide selection of their ribald articles and illustrations, The Flash Press includes short tales of urban life, editorials on prostitution, moralizing rants against homosexuality, and much more. These articles, as the editors of Whip put it, present “things as we find them, not garbled, on account of the terrors of the law.” Meaning? “When we happen to see an elegant female promenading Broadway or any other way, we shall, if she pleases our fancy, endeavor to describe her figure and gay dress with all the power of love itself.” With just this sort of ardor, the Whip and its competitors forever changed the debate over public sexuality and freedom of expression in America’s most important city.

Patricia Cline Cohen is professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of The Murder of Helen Jewett.

Timothy J. Gilfoyle is professor of history at Loyola University Chicago and the author of City of Eros.

Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz is professor of American studies and history at Smith College and the author of Rereading Sex.

 

The Authors are available for interviews. For more information, please contact Megan Marz at (773) 702-7490 or mmarz@uchicago.edu