Lascivious Bodies: A Sexual History of the Eighteenth Century

Plot

The eighteenth century saw a revolution in ordinary people's sex lives. In a time of social flux, the sheer array of sexual experimentation during this period led to the birth of sexuality as we know it today. From Florentine lesbian nuns to French cattle buggers, Lascivious Bodies examines all sorts of sex, in all sorts of places, with all sorts of people. Drawing upon vivid first-hand material and private letters, Julie Peakman depicts the libertine men and flighty courtesans of the era, including such personalities as James Boswell, Casanova, Peg Plunkett, Harriett Wilson and Julia Johnstone. She also explores heterosexual behaviours in courtship, marriage, adultery, divorce and prostitution; more curious or abnormal activities, such as foot-fetishism, flagellation, and necrophilia; as well as male and female homosexuality and cross-dressing. Lascivious Bodies is set to become the standard account of a period of multifarious sexual pleasures.