Hampton Waters founder

Barney Rosset

Barney Rosset was a groundbreaking and influential NYC publisher who founded Hampton Waters in 1964.  The owner of Grove Press, a publishing company (1951–85), Mr Rosset repeatedly and successfully challenged obscenity laws, championed avant-garde authors, and was regarded as one of the most important American publishers of the 20th century.

In 1959 Grove Press published a complete, uncensored edition of D.H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, but the U.S. Post Office, having deemed it obscene, seized shipments of it, and imposed a mailing ban. Within months, on the basis of the book’s literary merit, a federal judge overturned the ban. The publication in 1961 of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer in the U.S. by Grove Press led to obscenity trials that tested American laws on pornography. In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the book non-obscene. It is now regarded as an important work of 20th-century literature.

Rosset also successfully battled for the right to publish Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. Other authors championed by Mr. Rosset included Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Harold Pinter, Jean Genet, Malcolm X, Marguerite Duras, and Octavio Paz.

NOTABLE HAMPTON WATERS RESIDENTS

Hampton Waters has been home to a United States Attorney General, a Pulitzer Prize winner, a ground breaking voice in American publishing, (Hampton Waters founder, Barney Rosset) who took his fight to publish authors deemed obscene to the Supreme Court and won, and the first woman East Hampton town supervisor, who went on to many other leading roles.  From the accounts of long time residents, we learned of numerous celebrities, movie stars, artists, writers and public figures who have visited and partied in Hampton Waters including Marilyn Monroe.

READ MORE...

Three Mile Harbor’s History