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John Camden Hotten (1832, Clerkenwell-1873) was an English bibliophile and publisher.

Hotten was born in Clerkenwell, London to a family of Cornish origins. In 1855 he opened a small bookshop in London, and founded the publishing firm later known as Chatto & Windus. He was a compiler of an English language dictionary of slang: first published in 1859 under the title A dictionary of modern slang, cant, and vulgar words,^[1] the book was reprinted numerous times. He was also a collector, author and clandestine publisher of pornographic works such as The Romance of Chastisement. He was an associate of the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, publishing his Poems and Ballads after Moxon and Co. rejected them. However, Cecil Lang claims in his preface to Swinburne's Letters that Hotten had effectively blackmailed Swinburne into providing him with pornographic verse.^[2]

Notes

• John Sutherland, "The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction", Stanford University Press, 1990, ISBN 0804718423, p.307.
• Walter M. Kendrick, "The secret museum: pornography in modern culture", University of California Press, 1996, ISBN 0520207297, p.168
• Yopie Prins, "Victorian Sappho", Princeton University Press, 1999, ISBN 0691059195, p.153
• Simon Eliot, "Hotten: Rotten: Forgotten? An Apologia for a General Publisher", Book History 3 (2000) 61-93 doi:10.1353/bh.2000.0007

External links

• Oxford DNB entry for John Camden Hotten
• Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical, and Anecdotal By John Camden Hotten. 1874 ed. at Google books