The Private Case is a collection of erotica and pornography held initially by the British Museum and then, from 1973, by the British Library. The collection began between 1836 and 1870 and grew from the receipt of books from legal deposit, from the acquisition of bequests and, in some cases, from requests made to the police following their seizures of obscene material.
From its foundation in the eighteenth century, the British Museum acted as the national library of Britain. It was one of six legal deposit libraries in automatic receipt of all works published in the UK; this included pornographic or salacious material, seditious publications, those subversive of religion and works that could later be deemed by the courts as libellous. From the nineteenth century, the subversive and libellous material was separated into the Suppressed Safe collection while the erotica and pornography were placed in a locked cupboard known as the Private Case. Access to the material was restricted, and the catalogue of Private Case publications was not released to the library's general readership.
The contents of the Private Case collection changed over time, shrinking as works were declassified and put into the general collection, and growing when the library received bequests and donations from collectors. Some of these were large: the book collector Henry Spencer Ashbee's 1900 bequest contained 1,379 volumes of erotica; the anthropologist Eric Dingwall—an honorary assistant keeper to the department of printed books—donated several works during his lifetime and at his death; and in 1964 the bibliophile Charles Reginald Dawes bequeathed 246 works of erotic literature.
From 1964—and reflecting the increasing liberalisation of social mores of the time—the library began to liberalise its approach to works in the Private Case, revising the collection and moving items onto the general catalogue for general access, a process that was completed in 1983. There have been no new entries in the Private Case since 1990 and all new erotic or pornographic material is openly accessible and listed in the general catalogue. There is no restriction on access to the Private Case material, except for some items which are in a fragile condition. At its largest, the collection comprised some 4,000 works; as at 2023 about 2,500 volumes are still classified by the library as part of the Private Case.
The PrivateCase is a collection of erotica and pornography held initially by the British Museum and then, from 1973, by the British Library. The collection...
definition is that privatization is the sale of a state-owned enterprise or municipally owned corporation to private investors; in this case shares may be...
abessive (abbreviated ABE or ABESS), caritive and privative (abbreviated PRIV) is the grammatical case expressing the lack or absence of the marked noun...
undertake investigatory law services. Private investigators often work for attorneys in civil and criminal cases. In 1833, Eugène François Vidocq, a French...
May 2017, Case served under David Cameron and Theresa May as Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Case was born on...
Private equity (PE) is capital stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public. In the field of finance, private equity is...
Look up case or CASE in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Case or CASE may refer to: Instantiation (disambiguation), a realization of a concept, theme...
The Case of Private Hamp is a 1962 Australian television film which aired on the ABC. Despite the wiping of the era, a copy of the presentation exists...
A private military company (PMC) or private military and security company (PMSC) is a private company providing armed combat or security services for...
protocol depend on them. A special case of private link-local addresses is the loopback interface. These addresses are private and link-local by definition...
a Private Use Area (PUA) is a range of code points that, by definition, will not be assigned characters by the Unicode Consortium. Three private use...
legally regulate the private sector. Businesses operating within a country must comply with the laws in that country. In some cases, usually involving multinational...
Private banks are banks owned by either the individual or a general partner(s) with limited partner(s). Private banks are not incorporated. In any such...
The Turpin case involved the abuse of children and dependent adults by their parents, David and Louise Turpin of Perris, California, U.S. The ages of the...
Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established after Western Reserve...
Camel case (sometimes stylized autologically as camelCase or CamelCase, also known as camel caps or more formally as medial capitals) is the practice of...
Private universities and private colleges are institutions of higher education that are not operated, owned, or institutionally funded by governments....
A private prosecution is a criminal proceeding initiated by an individual private citizen or private organisation (such as a prosecution association) instead...
A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals) that corresponds to one or more potential...
A virtual private network (VPN) is a mechanism for creating a secure connection between a computing device and a computer network, or between two networks...
a private road may be trespassing[citation needed]. In some cases, the owner of a private road may permit the general public to use the road. Road regulations...
The Case School of Engineering is the engineering school of Case Western Reserve University, a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. It traces...
recapitalization — cash is distributed to the shareholders (in this case the financial sponsor) and its private-equity funds either from cash flow generated by the company...
years. "Private" islands in the United Kingdom, Brazil, Chile and some other countries are not always legally entirely private – in some cases foreshore...
anonymous, sometimes by contract. In other cases, they are allowed to mention their role publicly. The term private label originated in retail, but has since...
the Private Division label. In the case of Darkborn, some time in 2018, Private Division and The Outsiders decided to go separate ways, with Private Division...
Global Information