If you think you’ve had your fill of malicious gossip, sex as a route to celebrity, and relentless sports and entertainment news, you might just be reading all about it two centuries too late. Under such headlines as “Whoredome in New York” and “Philadelphia Pimps of Fame,” New York’s 1840s flash papers served up with nonpareil style and irresistible wit all the news that wasn’t fit to print about the city’s underworld of brothels, wantons, unfortunate girls, and their all-too-eager customers. Ephemeral publications that also featured gossip about boxing, dog fighting, and the theater scene, the Rake, the Flash, the Whip, and the Libertine were must-reads for sporting men keen to learn about the city’s leisure activities and erotic entertainments. Now, in The Flash Press, these papers are once again in print—this time taking the more discrete form of a book that looks under Victorian-era New York’s buttoned-up surface to reveal the colorful (read: more interesting) characters teeming beneath.
Read the press release.