Though sex and sexuality have always been amongst the staples of literature, it was only in the thirties that graphic representation of sexual activity laid claim to being considered as high literature. Pornography, of course, had always existed, but previously it had been kept under the counter, even the classics of antiquity being usually issued in expurgated form to ensure that literature remained pure.

The name most commonly associated with the change that occurred between the wars is that of Henry Miller, whose Tropic of Capricorn I remember reading as a schoolboy, with some disappointment, after finding it on my parents' bookshelves. He, and other experimental authors, as they were described at the time, were published by the Olympia Press in Paris, founded by Maurice Girodias. I discovered one of their publications at the old Gunasena's Bookshop when I was buying prizebooks, and took hold of it eagerly, though I did not venture to take it to school to be duly stamped as a prizebook. It was a parody of the Odyssey, and seemed much more entertaining than Miller, as was also the eighteenth century classic Fanny Hill, lent me by a fellow prizewinner at school who later became a lay preacher.

Despite his seminal efforts, no pun intended, Miller is now largely forgotten, and it is not only because he is American that I am not including him in this series.