[FREETHOUGHT - DARWINISM - LAW] "Democritus" (pseud. Frederick Raymond Coulson) [and] G. Astor Singer

Darwin on Trial at the Old Bailey [with] Judicial Scandals and Errors

London: The University Press, Ltd, [1898]. First Edition. Octavo; burgundy cloth boards; 107pp. Cloth a shade sunned at spine, else a tight, straight, Very Good copy. The two titles bound together, as issued; second title has its own half-title, but pagination is continuous. Includes Appendix, "The English Press and the Prosecution."

Two works, the first a satirical play, the second a scholarly essay, attacking British censorship laws and the suppression of public speech. The University Press (sometimes calling itself the "Watford University Press") was a project of Rowland de Villiers, a freethought and free-speech activist and publisher of controversial literature who has been described by one historian as "a somewhat shady character at best" (see Odin Dekkers, J.M. Robertson. Lon:1998). Villiers was most famously the British publisher of Havelock Ellis's treatise on sexual inversion; he was arrested on obscenity charges in 1901 and died in police custody. "G. Astor Singer" appears to have been a Villiers pseudonym, and we would not be entirely surprised if "Frederick Raymond Coulson" was an alias as well.

Price: $125.00

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