Eighteenth-Century British Erotica, Part I (Hardcover)

Although scholars of the British 18th century have become increasingly attuned to questions of sexuality, corporeality, and legalism, they have not heretofore had easy access to one of the period's richest funds of data: the erotica and pornography that permeated the culture. This set reprints many of the period's most notorious works, including eight from The Fifteen Plagues of a Maiden-Head (1707) to Harris's List of Covent-Garden Ladies (1786(?)-93) that resulted in highly publicized court battles and in some instances helped shape laws on censorship that survived into modernity. As they did in the 18th-century bookshop, homosexual and heterosexual works intermingle, alongside of works that claim legal, medical, or political legitimacy, and works that pretend to nothing but prurience. Virtually all the works have been out of print since the 18th century. Each volume includes an introduction, individual headnotes, facsimiles of the texts, and annotations, and the first volume includes a general introduction.