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American anti vice activist (1844–1915)

Comstock was born in New Canaan, Connecticut, the son of Polly Ann (née Lockwood) and Thomas Anthony Comstock. As a young man, he enlisted and fought for the Union in the American Civil War from December 1863 to September 1865. In 1867, he moved to New York City, where he worked as a porter, a stock clerk, and a wholesale dry goods salesman. On March 5, 1873, he was appointed a special agent of the U. S. Postal Service, a position he held until January 1907. In 1892, he built a house at 35 Beekman Road, where he lived until he died there in 1915. Anthony Comstock authored several books focused on the theme of vice suppression, including Frauds Exposed; or, How the People Are Deceived and Robbed, and Youth Corrupted (New York: J. Howard Brown, 1880), Traps for the Young (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1883), and Morals versus Art (New York: J. S. Ogilvie and Company, 1877). These works explore various aspects of societal corruption and the perceived moral degradation of the youth.

Motivated by first hand experience with what he saw as a constant barrage of debauchery among fellow Union soldiers during the Civil War, when he gained power it was not long before Comstock aroused intense loathing from early civil liberties groups and strong support from church based groups that were worried about public morals. During his career, Comstock made many and diverse enemies, such as Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger. In her autobiography, Goldman referred to Comstock as the leader of America's "moral eunuchs." In later years his health was affected by a severe blow to the head. On the second of July 1873, Comstock was assaulted during an argument with a Dr. Selden, who "struck him over the forehead with a heavy seal ring" after being punched in the ribs by an umbrella (Selden accused Comstock of being "sneak") The following year, Comstock was stabbed in the head by a "dirk with a blade about three inches long" by Charles Conroy. Conroy, long a foil for Comstock dating back to 1868, was "an unrepentant two bit pornographer—whose name even the New York Times couldn't get right, mistakenly reporting him as John or James Conroy in his arrest notices—inadvertently kick started Anthony Comstock's career as the most influential moralizer in American history". He later lectured to college audiences and wrote newspaper articles to sustain his causes. Before his death, Comstock attracted the interest of a young law student, J. Edgar Hoover, who showed interest in his causes and methods.

In 1873, Comstock created the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, an institution dedicated to moral supervision of the American public. Some of Comstock's ideas of what were "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" could be seen by many modern Westerners as quite broad; during his time of greatest power, some anatomy textbooks were prohibited from being sent to medical students by the United States Postal Service.

Comstock was also opposed to woman suffragists, notably Victoria Claflin Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Celeste Claflin. The men's journal The Days' Doings popularized images of the sisters for three years and was instructed by its editor (while Comstock was present) to stop producing lewd images. Comstock also took legal action against the paper for advertising contraceptives. After the sisters published an exposé of an adulterous affair between the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton, he had the sisters arrested under laws forbidding the use of the postal service to distribute "obscene material", specifically citing a mangled quotation from the Bible that Comstock found obscene. They were later acquitted of the charges. Less fortunate was Ida Craddock, who died by suicide on the eve of reporting to federal prison for distributing via the U. S. mail various sexually explicit marriage manuals that she had written.

Through his various campaigns, he destroyed 15 tons of books, 284,000 pounds of plates for printing "objectionable" books, and nearly 4,000,000 pictures. Comstock boasted that he was responsible for 4,000 arrests and claimed he drove 15 persons to suicide in his "fight for the young".

On September 21, 1915, Comstock died of pneumonia at the age of 71 at his home in Summit, New Jersey.

The term "comstockery", meaning "censorship because of perceived obscenity or immorality", was coined in an editorial in The New York Times in 1895. George Bernard Shaw used the term in 1905 after Comstock had alerted the New York City police to the content of Shaw's play Mrs. Warren's Profession. Shaw remarked that "Comstockery is the world's standing joke at the expense of the United States. Europe likes to hear of such things. It confirms the deep seated conviction of the Old World that America is a provincial place, a second rate country town civilization after all." He is thought to be a major influence for the main antagonist of BioShock Infinite, Zachary Hale Comstock, as they share the same last names and have numerous ideological similarities.

Anthony Comstock: Roundsman of the Lord (1927), Heywood Broun and Margaret Leech of the Algonquin Round Table, examines Comstock's personal history and his investigative, surveillance, and law enforcement techniques. Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock (2018), Columbia University Press, by Amy B. Werbel, presents a colorful journey through Comstock's career that doubles as a new history of post–Civil War America's risqué visual and sexual culture. The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship, And Civil Liberties In The Gilded Age (2021), Farrar, Straus and Giroux, by Amy Sohn, focuses on Comstock's impacts on society, the Comstock Laws, and eight women charged with violating the law.