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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has postponed the publication of Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love by Naomi Wolf, which it planned to release in the U.S. tomorrow. The book was first questioned during a BBC Radio interview last month when it became apparent that Wolf had misunderstood a 19th-century legal term--"death recorded," which meant that a death sentence was not carried out--mistakenly stating that "several dozen" men had been executed in Victorian England for having sex with other men.
Initially the publisher said it was standing by the book, but late last week told the New York Times that there were more possible problems in the book. "As we have been working with Naomi Wolf to make corrections to Outrages, new questions have arisen that require more time to explore," Houghton Mifflin Harcourt said. "We are postponing publication and requesting that all copies be returned from retail accounts while we work to resolve those questions." Her book tour is also being put on hiatus.
Wolf objected to the publication postponement and recall, saying in a statement, "I stand by my work. The misinterpretations I made, I directly acknowledged and took immediate action to correct; but many of the other critiques are either subject to interpretation or are themselves in error. A rebuttal article was underway. More responsiveness and more transparency are the right answers to criticism, and not the complete withdrawal of a text."
Outrages was published last month in the U.K. by Virago, which is standing by the book, according to the Bookseller. Virago said it will make "any necessary corrections to future reprints."