ABSTRACT
Literary censorship, especially of matters pertaining to homosexuality, is hardly a surprising topic to appear in a volume of essays devoted to "Victorian Secrets". The Home Office is the branch of the government responsible for initiating prosecutions against alleged obscenity on behalf of the public. It is important to note that employees of this institution vigorously disputed accusations of censorship, usually made against them by the literary elite whose works were challenged under the law. The chapter addresses a curious incident from 1885 involving an editorial rant against homosexuality in a small London weekly newspaper called Town Talk. The unspoken assumption of the law that an obscene text is one that encourages sexual acts is central to understanding the government's concerns about Town Talk, one of the few records from the years 1857-1900 that remain in the Home Office archive.
