A narrative history about Anthony Comstock, US Postal Inspector and vice hunter, and the remarkable women who opposed him. Anthony Comstock, special agent to the U.S. Post Office, was one of the most important men in the lives of nineteenth-century women. The Comstock law, passed in 1873, penalized the mailing of contraception and obscenity with long sentences and steep fines. Between 1873 and Comstock's death in 1915, eight women were charged with...

"Anthony Comstock (March 7, 1844 - September 21, 1915) was an American anti-vice activist, United States Postal Inspector, and secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV), who was dedicated to upholding Christian morality. He opposed obscene literature, abortion, contraception, masturbation, gambling, prostitution, and patent medicine. The terms comstockery and comstockism refer to his extensive censorship campaign of materials...

Anthony Comstock was America's first professional censor. From 1873 to 1915, as Secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, Comstock led a crusade against lasciviousness, salaciousness, and obscenity that resulted in the confiscation and incineration of more than three million pictures, postcards, and books he judged to be obscene. But as Amy Werbel shows in this rich cultural and social history, Comstock's campaign to rid America...