History of Sexuality

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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,…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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,…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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.…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Coming Soon

    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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…