Bookleggers and SmuthoundsBetween the two world wars, at a time when both sexual repression and sexual curiosity were commonplace, New York was the center of the erotic literature trade in America. The market was large and contested, encompassing not just what might today be considered pornographic material but also sexually explicit fiction of authors such as James Joyce, Theodore Dreiser, and D. H. Lawrence; mail order manuals; pulp romances; and "little dirty comics."