Glassco sans permission

A passing comment concerning piracy made during my McGill lecture - available online - has brought a few queries.

John Glassco's problems with pirates began with the appearance of a cheap, two-volume edition of The English Governess, a product of Taiwanese scoundrels. When exactly this bastard book appeared is lost to history, but evidence indicates that it was very close in following the June 1960 Ophilia Press first edition. While it's likely Glassco never knew of this illegitimate publication, he was very much aware of the one pictured above. Published in 1967 by Collector's Publications of Covina, California, The Governess was a transparent attempt to cash in Grove's newly published Harriet Marwood, Governess, the original version of the romance. Glassco, who was greatly offended by the pirated edition, fought as best he could, but publisher Marvin Miller was an elusive figure, and was far beyond the grasping hands of a poet located in Foster, Quebec.

Not coincidentally, Collector's Publications pirated another Canadian-penned Olympia Press book: Bottoms Up by Jock Carroll. In this case, the claim, "FIRST AMERICAN PRINTING" is not at all true. As The Shy Photographer, the novel had already been published in hardcover by Stein & Day and as a mass market Bantam paperback.

Others have followed the late Mr Miller, the most notable being England's AKS Books, whose catalogue lists Glassco's erotic classic under the confusing catch-all title The English Governess: Harriet Marwood. The publisher also offers his long flagellantine poem Squire Hardman as part of an anthology titled Punitive Poetry.

With the advent of Print On Demand technology and ebooks, piracy has flourished. Kessinger Publishing offers Glassco's completion of Aubrey Beardsley's Under the Hill, but the most egregious firm has been olympiapress.com. An imprint of appropriately-named Disruptive Publishing, olympiabooks.com is not to be confused with Maurice Girodias' Olympia Press. That said, it does issue works that once found home with the legendary publisher. In Glassco's case, we find Under the Hill. The website misinforms:

Anyway, in '59, Glassco, author of The English Governess, joins Beardsley's illustrations with the deceased author's unfinished manuscripts of the story. Adding in his own bits here and there, voila [sic], we have "Under the Hill," a kind of fairy tale for adults, featuring Tannhauser [sic], a German hero of myth and the Venus, goddess of love, some wild parties, and sex without repercussion.

The most beautiful and elaborate Olympia Press book, olympiapress.com has reduced Under the Hill to this:

Also on offer is Glassco's pseudonymous The English Governess, which Girodias first published under his Ophelia imprint. It can be purchased as a "5 x 8 Perfect Bound" or as a download for your Sony Reader. Cost: US$8.96.

There's more: olympiapress.com lists pornographic works that Glassco published with other houses. Fetish Girl, which which appeared in 1972 as a Venus Library book under the pseudonym Sylvia Bayer, is worthy of note, but the most interesting to me is The Temple of Pederasty (North Hollywood, CA: Hanover House, 1970). In pitching the download (only), the olympiapress.com again misinforms:

Based on source tales from the same Saikaku material that Tuttle Publishing derived its "Comrade Loves of the Samurai" from. This peculiar edition supposedly derives more immediately from a hilariously bad, clandestine publication of a 1928 translation, largely of Saikaku's "Glorious Tales of Pederasty." However, in view of Glassco's unique talents, as poet and author of the Victorian-fake extraordinary The English Governess and Fetish Girl, it's quite likely the book emerged more from the pen of Glassco himself, than from anything Saikaku wrote. Owing to the extreme difficulty people have had in finding the title, the Olympia Press is proud to offer this work of gay erotica for all the scholars out there.

"Banned By Amazon", trumpets olympiapress.com, to which I add that in 1970 The Temple of Pederasty was also banned by Customs and Excise Canada in a decision that would most certainly stand if revisited.

As a completist, sadly, I help support these characters.

Update: A pirate responds!

The Olympia Glassco - Book the Second

The English Governess

Miles Underwood [pseud. John Glassco]

Paris: Ophelia, 1960 [sic]

In his seventy-one years, John Glassco produced five books of verse, eight volumes of translation, and the prose masterpiece Memoirs of Montparnasse, but not one approached the sales he enjoyed with The English Governess and its sister book Harriet Marwood, Governess. Both stories of flagellantine romance between a boy, Richard Lovel, and his beautiful governess, Harriet Marwood, they're easily confused and are often described as being one and the same.

Though published second, Harriet Marwood, Governess is actually the older of the two. In 1959, it was offered to Maurice Girodias, but the publisher thought it too tame. Glassco then rewrote the novel – perhaps with the help of Elma, his wife – slashing it by more than half and ramping up the sex. Made to order, as The English Governess it was quickly accepted and appeared within ninety days under Olympia's Ophelia Press imprint.

Glassco chose not to be identified as the author, selecting Miles Underwood as a nom de plume. He kept his secret for over a year, and only began to reveal himself when seeking legal advice from F.R. Scott concerning Girodias' non-payment.

The English Governess was a immediate success, a favourite in a market that relied almost exclusively on word of mouth. Reprinted after just three months, on 10 January 1961 it was suppressed by French authorities under a decades-old decree targeting périodiques et ouvrages de provenance étrangère. As was his practice, Girodias reissued the banned novel using a different title: Under the Birch: The Story of an English Governess. Not much of a disguise, but more than enough to baffle the brigade mondaine. The novel has since appeared as The Governess (a pirated edition) and in a bowdlerized edition published under the catch-all title The Authentic Confessions of Harriet Marwood, an English Governess.

Note: My two volume copy, printed by Taiwanese pirates, is a cheap reproduction of the first edition. I'm assuming that these disreputable souls divided the novel in half so as to enable the rusting staple binding.

The Olympia Glassco - Book the First

Under the Hill

Aubrey Beardsley, completed by John Glassco

Paris: Olympia, 1959

Aubrey Beardsley devoted a good portion of his short life to this retelling of the Tannhaüser legend, and returned to it repeatedly until the last cough.

While Glassco claimed that he'd first read an expurgated version as a boy (unlikely), and had hand copied the true text as a McGill University student (possible), it wasn't until 1948 that he began this completion of Beardsley's work. He picks up the abandoned thread mid-way through the tenth chapter, then, following the legend and Beardsley's rough plan, adds a further nine. Glassco doesn't create so much as a seam – despite introducing personal interests not shared by the dead Decadent: flagellation and the touch of the governess. In his completion, Glassco has Tannhaüser attend a performance of Pink Cheeks, a pantomime-operetta that is advertised as "Two Hours of Fun & Flagellation". Later, while in Rome to seek absolution, the Minnesänger sets out to transcribe his sins, lest he forget any transgression before the Holy Father. In doing so, he casts his mind back to the governesses of his childhood: Mlle Fanfreluche, with whom he'd shared "merry games at bedtime", and a later woman who had first introduced him to the pleasures of the birch.

In its first edition, Under the Hill looks unlike any other Olympia Press book. Illustrated by Beardsley, printed on heavy stock, bound in green watered silk, and issued in a numbered edition of three thousand, it was a extravagant production that Girodias would never repeat.

In the summer of 1965, French authorities seized Under the Hill. The unsold stock, more than half the print run, was threatened with destruction. In defending the book, publisher Maurice Girodias was placed in the absurd position of having to prove Beardsley's reputation as a respected artist in a court of law.


The charges attracted interest from the London's New English Library, which quickly published a paperback edition to capitalize on a Beardsley revival being fuelled by an immensely popular retrospective at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Yet, despite all this excitement and interest across La Manche, Girodias lost his case. In August 1966, all copies of the elegant Olympia Press edition seized eleven months earlier were condemned to the flame.

Glassco was heartbroken, and could not understand the decision in that he'd never thought of Under the Hill as pornography: "It is romantic, rococo, faisandé, Huysmanesque, playful, madly affected, solidly in the tradition of dandyism; it's even got a highly moral ending, with Tannhaüser officially damned & trapped forever under the hill. I wouldn't be in his elegant slippers for anything."

Tannhaüser Before the Hill of Venus

Legal note: Under French law, Glassco, as copyright holder, should have been charged alongside the publisher. After the court case was lost, Girodias wrote the author: "Curiously, and strangely, the prosecuting magistrate preferred to consider that you did not exist, and that you were a figment of my imagination, if you pardon the expression. I did not oppose that view naturally."