Solomon's Arrest in Paris

Exactly 140 years ago in Paris, on Friday, April 18, 1874, the 33-year-old Anglo-Jewish artist Simeon Solomon was sentenced to 3 months in prison for "mutually indulging in obscene contact in public" with 17-year-old Henri Lefranc (aka Raphael-Maximillien Dumont), both having been arrested in a public urinal at the Place de la Bourse on March 4. One often doesn't think to commemorate an event such as this, particularly since it isn't as well-known as Solomon's previous arrest for the same crime in London the year beforehand. Both arrests attest to the secrecy and danger male lovers faced at a time when same-sex passion was a criminal act. Credit goes to historian William Peniston for first uncovering the documentation of this arrest, and my colleague Carolyn Conroy has expanded on Peniston's research. It's actually rather surprising that biographers and art history has chosen to forget about the Parisian arrest. His friend and collector Robbie Ross (himself later buried with Oscar Wilde) wrote about Solomon in his obituary that he: "used to boast that he had been in prison in every country in Europe; but besides London there is no evidence that he was arrested elsewhere than in Paris, where he was detained three months." Solomon's artistic productivity in 1874 was blunted by this time in prison; nevertheless, he produced that year this beautiful drawing you see above, Until the Day Break and the Shadows Flee Away, a quote from the Song of Solomon 2:17 (King James Version). The image you see here is a Frederick Hollyer platinum print photograph of the drawing from the collection of the Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery.

For more information:
Carolyn Conroy, "'He Hath Mingled with the Ungodly': The Life of Simeon Solomon after 1873 with a Survey of the Extant Work" (Ph.D. Diss., University of York, 2009).

William A. Peniston, Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris (New York: Harrington Park Press, 2004).

Robert Ross, "A Note on Simeon Solomon," Westminster Gazette (August 24, 1905).

Library Bytes: Google Books

More than once, I have felt the pull in two directions in the debate between those interested in protecting works of art and literature through copyright (e.g., authors) versus allowing free access to all information (e.g., libraries). There is a lot at stake in this debate both for creators and the public, and I can see both sides of the argument. Those who create should be able to protect their works for a limited period of time, but we also should be able to bring freely as much information as possible to the masses. For the past couple of years Google has been involved in a book-scanning project as part of their global ideal of digitizing everything in the world and making it freely available over the Internet. They have been working with major libraries to scan books in their collections and allow people to search them on their Google Books website. The idea isn't new. Companies like netLibrary started something comparable to this nearly ten years ago, but they were charging libraries subscription costs for their patrons to read the electronic books. While Google's book-scanning project works beautifully for those who are researchers and do not necessarily need to read every book cover-to-cover for specific projects (but can if they wish), the fact remains that Google has not restricted itself to scanning books in the public domain. They have been scanning books still protected by copyright and in some cases still in print. As a result, two class-action lawsuits were filed against the company by authors and publishers to protect their interests in Google's project. Google claims that what is it doing is an extension of fair use. The authors and publishers argue otherwise, that Google has not asked for their permission and that this free distribution impinges on their attempts to earn a profit. As it turns out, this week Google has settled, agreeing to pay out $125 million in compensation, although they are denying any wrong-doing in the suit. There are other stipulations, all of which you can read about in an article from Wednesday's New York Times, "Google Settles Suit Over Book-Scanning," but take a look also at Google's own webpage about the settlement and how it will alter their service: Google Book Search Settlement Agreement. Personally, I think Google Books is a fantastic tool. I've used it on more than one occasion in my research, because the scanned books are fully searchable by keyword, which means you can look for references in books to people, places, and events you might not ever think to look in. For my own research in nineteenth-century art and culture, this has been extremely useful, because many of the books published during that century are difficult to find or are too fragile to hold. Contrary to what the lawsuit argued, it has inspired me at times to seek out the purchasing of these books if possible. (After all, the actual reading of electronic books is an unpleasant task. For me, reading a book entails the experience of actually holding a book, and I never want to give that up.) On the other hand, I'm also pleased that there is going to be a curtailing of the free electronic delivery of works protected by copyright. Authors do have the right to protect their own work, at least for a time-limited period. It seems then that the middle road is the most viable for all those involved in this debate.