Bad Sexology: The Scientific Publications of the University Press (Watford and London), 1897–1901


 This article surveys the full catalogue of works published by the University Press, erstwhile of Watford, and its mysterious proprietor George Ferdinand Springmühl von Weissenfeld. The intrepid (and criminal) outfit is well known for publishing the first English editions of Sexual Inversion by Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds which were banned in Britain following a sensational trial in 1898. Other works produced by the press were crucial in establishing the new sexology across social strata in modern Britain. Among them are several English translations of French sexological tomes. There were also in-house productions that shaped the new sexology for a popular British readership including some of the first non-fiction books by Walter Matthew Gallichan, written under the pseudonym Geoffrey Mortimer. More than this, von Weissenfeld mounted an extraordinary defence of the freedom to publish scientific books about sex, an endeavour that was inextricably linked with his anti-establishment marketing strategy.