Sexual Outcasts - 1750-1850 (Hardcover)

This four-volume set presents a range of texts selected to illustrate the diversity of responses to the concealed body and to the "secret" or forbidden sexual practices of 1740-1850. The documents serve to trace the circulation of heterogenous constructions of the body and of sexuality at a particular historical moment and to record their evolution and displacement in time. Each volume follows the means by which prohibitions and taboos were produced and circulated. The reader can therefore explore the processes of marginalization and ideological exclusion that disciplined the representation of the body and the construction of sexual outcasts. The set presents a range of textual material: criminal reports; scientific and medical publications; newspaper items; sex manuals; guidebooks; speculative accounts, and case histories. The variety of sources permits a multiple perspective on the body, the sexual drives, gendered psychologies and perverse behaviour across the century. The texts provide a sourcebook as well as a platform for readings of literary texts and cultural history from 1740 to 1850.