History of Sexuality

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  Branded

  When Branded: A Diary was published in Berlin in 1920, Emmy Hennings was called the most important woman writer of her day. Her autobiographical novel…

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  Are They Women?

  Deeply engaged in women’s rights debates and discussions of the “third sex,” Are They Women? is about the lively communities of lesbians across turn-of-the-century central…

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  Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

  John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure has been described as the first erotic novel in English and is perhaps the greatest example of…

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  A Marriage Below Zero

  A Marriage Below Zero is the first novel in English to explicitly explore the subject of male homosexuality. Written by a British émigré to America,…

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  Laon and Cythna

  Laon and Cythna is one of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s most celebrated, and most controversial, literary works. At once philosophical treatise and love story, it follows…

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  Nightwalkers

  This anthology makes available for the first time a selection of narratives by and about prostitutes in the eighteenth century. These memoirs, some written by…

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  A Sunless Heart

  In A Sunless Heart, Edith Johnstone establishes a feverish atmosphere for her novel’s story of emotional and physical hardship and the power of bonds between…

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  The London Jilt

  This entertaining novel’s full title, which claims that it will show “All the Artifices and Strategems which the Ladies of Pleasure make use of for…

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  Tess of the d’Urbervilles – Second Edition

  This classic novel tells the story of how the poor rural couple John and Joan Durbeyfield become convinced that they are descended from the ancient…

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  Sexing the Maple

  Sexing the Maple is a unique sourcebook designed to raise issues of nationalism and sexuality in Canada through a rich and diverse selection of fiction,…

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  The Woman in White

  As the inscription on his tombstone reveals, Wilkie Collins wanted to be remembered as the “author of The Woman in White,” for it was this…

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  Hauntings and Other Fantastic Tales

  Vernon Lee writes in the Preface to Hauntings, “My ghosts are what you call spurious ghosts... of whom I can affirm only one thing, that…

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  Mrs Warren’s Profession

  One of Bernard Shaw’s early plays of social protest, Mrs Warren’s Profession places the protagonist’s decision to become a prostitute in the context of the…

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  Moll Flanders

  Born to a petty thief in London’s notorious Newgate prison and determined to make her way in a rapacious and materialistic society, Moll Flanders recounts…

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  The Scarlet Letter – Second Edition

  Hawthorne’s story of the disgraced Hester Prynne (who must wear a scarlet “A” as the mark of her adultery), of her illegitimate child, Pearl, and…

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  The Woman Who Did

  The controversial subject matter of Grant Allen’s novel, The Woman Who Did, made it a major bestseller in 1895. It tells the story of Herminia…

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  Fantomina and Other Works

  This collection of early works by Eliza Haywood includes the well-known novella Fantomina (1725) along with three other short, highly engaging Haywood works: The Tea-Table…

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  Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne

  In 1810, while still at Eton, Percy Bysshe Shelley published Zastrozzi, the first of his two early Gothic prose romances. He published the second, St.…

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  Jude the Obscure

  When Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure appeared in 1895, it immediately caused scandal and controversy. Its frank treatment of Jude’s sexual relationships with Arabella and…

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  The Rover – Second Edition

  Increasingly Aphra Behn—the first woman professional writer—is also regarded as one of the most important writers of the 17th century. The Rover, her most famous…

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  The Victim of Prejudice – Second Edition

  Mary Hays was an outspoken Radical intellectual in the turbulent decade of the 1790’s. She argued vehemently for the need to recognise the moral and…

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  Aurora Floyd

  Aurora Floyd is one of the leading novels in the genre known as ‘sensation fiction’—a tradition in which the key texts include Wilkie Collins’s The…

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  The Vindications: The Rights of Men and The Rights of Woman

  The works of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) ranged from the early Thoughts on the Education of Daughters to The Female Reader, a selection of texts for…

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  Zofloya

  The protagonist of Charlotte Dacre’s best known novel, Zofloya, or the Moor (1806) is unique in women’s Gothic and Romantic literature, and has more in…