Hubert Selby Jr.

Martin Kich (Wright State University)

Ed. by Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 23 Jul 1928
Died 26 Apr 2004
Activity 1964-2004

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Story-writer

Resources

Selby's Works

Save to Bookshelf

In 1964, Grove Press published Hubert Selby, Jr.'s

Last Exit to Brooklyn

, a collection of short stories with many of the same unifying, novelistic elements as Sherwood Anderson's

Winesburg, Ohio

and James Joyce's

Dubliners

. Although both of those books had been published to some controversy – and although

Winesburg, Ohio

had been controversial in part because of its treatment of sexual issues – the controversy that Selby's book occasioned stands out as a singular event in the history of publishing.

Most of the restrictions on content that had caused D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and Joyce's Ulysses to be banned several decades earlier had been diluted to ineffectuality by the early 1960s. Attacking a work for supposed obscenity had suddenly become as politically and

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1389 words

Citation: Kich, Martin. "Hubert Selby Jr.". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 March 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4002, accessed 21 November 2024.]

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