Rogering in Merryland: the Unspeakable Edmund Curll
Thomas Keymer, 13 December 2007
Samuel Johnson would not have had the term ‘Curlism’ in mind when he expressed regret that, even as his dictionary was being printed, ‘some words are budding, and some falling away.’ Yet it is a good enough instance of the shifts that Johnson deplored. ‘Bowdlerism’ still survives in the vocabulary of publishing to denote prudish expurgation; Curlism, which...