19 Facts About Samuel Roth

Samuel Roth was an American publisher and writer.

Samuel Roth was the plaintiff in the landmark 1957 case Roth v United States, in which the United States Supreme Court redefined the constitutional test for determining which constitutes obscene material unprotected by the First Amendment.

Samuel Roth, a Jew, was born in 1893 in Nuszcze, then Galicia, now in Ukraine.

Samuel Roth started working at age 8 as an egg chandler, at 10 as a newsboy, and at 14 as a baker.

Samuel Roth's sequence of 18 sonnets, "Nustscha" is an elegy to his hometown.

Joyce won an injunction to stop Samuel Roth from printing these expurgated installments.

Samuel Roth did well with his William Faro imprint in the early 1930s.

In 1931, Samuel Roth published an expose of Herbert Hoover which sold extremely well.

Samuel Roth received illustrated books and pamphlets and sometimes left them in subway lockers for trusted customers.

Samuel Roth spent the years 1957 to 1961 there due to his conviction for distributing what was considered obscene and pandering to prurience in his advertisements.

Samuel Roth attempted to leave the apartment to make a telephone call and an altercation with a police officer occurred.

My Life and Loves in Greenwich Village was allegedly written by Maxwell Bodenheim, whom Samuel Roth employed during his last years.

One of Samuel Roth's strangest publications was an exploitation of Marilyn Monroe's suicide, Violations of the Child Marilyn Monroe by "Her Psychiatrist Friend".

Samuel Roth was one of the anti-Semitic writers Roth befriended, although Roth continued to be an orthodox Jew throughout his life.

Samuel Roth self-published his own works during the 1940s and 50s, including a novel about a naive, virginal Italian immigrant discovering the plight of the working class in America, Bumarap.

The narrator, clearly a version of Samuel Roth, is given the mission of reconciling the Jewish and Christian peoples in the 20th century, a frequent theme in the 19th and earlier part of the 20th century.

Samuel Roth died age 79 on July 3,1974, of complications from diabetes.

Samuel Roth did not ask for permission from some of the most famous writers he published not only in his underground publications but in his trade imprint, William Faro, Inc.

The Columbia University Libraries have acquired an archive of Samuel Roth's annotated books, court documents, business records, copyright statements, unpublished typescripts, and letters to and from distributors, writers, and printers.