1601 (Mark Twain)

1601 (Mark Twain)

Conversation, as it was the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors. or simply 1601 is the title of a humorous risque work by Mark Twain, first published anonymously in 1880, and finally acknowledged by the author in 1906.

Written as an extract from the diary of one of Queen Elizabeth's servants, 1601 was, according to Edward Wagenknecht, "the most famous piece of pornography in American literature." However, it was more ribaldry than pornography; its content was more in the nature of irreverent and vulgar comedic shock than of "obscene" erotica. Prior to the court decisions in the United States in 1959-1966 that legalized the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover, Tropic of Cancer, and Fanny Hill, the book continued to be considered unprintable, and was circulated clandestinely in privately printed limited editions, one of which was printed in 1951 in Chicago from hand-set type by John Hecht for editor, Franklin J. Meine. Its characterization as "pornography" was satirized by Meine in the introduction to the 1939 edition.