ABSTRACT
The question of Wilde's authorship is fascinating, but obscured Hirsch's geographical profile of book's ten-year journey from French bookshop in London's Piccadilly-Soho district to the phantasmatic exposition grounds in Paris. Instead of following Hirsch's prompt to uncover Teleny's secret author, this chapterm follows and extends his map of Teleny's secret trafficking from hand to hand. The book's passage from hand to hand, shop to street, and channel to fairground occurred in conjunction with British efforts to stamp out the clandestine book trade in London, desperate dealers facing bankruptcy and relocation to Paris, and emerging international markets in the life-like visual obscenities of the postcard, photograph and mutoscope picture. This chapter analyzes the novel's eroticism in relation to the changing media geography of the highly specialized book trade that produced it. Author's term media geography proposes that the mapping of human and commercial interactions with different spaces should be understood in relation to changing media technologies and cultures.
