Ralph Ginzburg

Ralph Ginzburg (October 28, 1929 – July 6, 2006) was an American author, editor, publisher and photo-journalist. He was best known for publishing books and magazines on erotica and art and for his conviction in 1963 for violating federal obscenity laws.

Ginzburg studied journalism and accounting at Baruch College of the City University of New York, was editor-in-chief of its campus newspaper, and on graduation in 1949 became a copyboy and cub reporter at the New York Daily Compass. Two years later he was drafted into the Army during the Korean War and assigned to Fort Myer, adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery, where he both edited the post newspaper, and took wedding photos for base marriages. While still in the Army, he worked at night as a copy editor for the Washington D.C. Times-Herald.

Upon discharge from the Army he shifted into broadcasting and magazines, working for Esquire magazine, NBC, Reader's Digest, Collier's, LOOK and, as he put it, "other pillars of communications industry respectability". He finally saved enough money to rent his own office — a fifth floor walkup in an old Manhattan office building.

His first publication was An Unhurried View of Erotica (New York: Helmsman Press, 1958). This rather scholarly-seeming book explored an ostensible undercurrent of pornography that runs throughout English literature. Beginning with a manuscript given by Leofric, Bishop of Exeter, to his cathedral in 1070 through the outright pornographic work of the 1950s, An Unhurried View examines examples of English erotic literature in an interpretive and explanatory context. The end of the book includes a bibliography of 100 titles. He convinced the notable psychoanalyst Theodor Reik to write the introduction.

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