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SEX & SEXUALITY, 1640-1940

Literary, Medical and Sociological Perspectives

Parts 3 and 4: Erotica, 1650-1900, from the Private Case Collection at the British Library, London

 

Publisher's Note - Part 4

Part 1 of the series covers sources from the Bodleian Library, Oxford and the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London and is divided into sections covering sexual habits, advice books, moral
guidance, medical works, literary treatments, prostitution and the
sociology of sex. Part 2 from the Bodleian Library covers romantic friendships and lesbian relationships in literature and history.

The Private Case Collection at the British Library has only recently been open to researchers. As our editor, Brad Mudge, Professor in the Department of English at the University of Colorado Denver notes, “It is one of the largest and most representative collections of erotic and pornographic literature in the world.” It consists of two major bequests, one by H Spencer Ashbee, the famous nineteenth century erotic bibliographer, in 1900 and the other by C R Dawes in 1964. Included in the collection are almost two thousand erotic publications. They range over four centuries and appear in French, German, Italian and Latin as well as in English.

Part 4 of our series from the Private Case Collection, covering the years 1890-1908, contains a mixture of prose, magazines, poems and songs together with two important autobiographies: My Secret Life (1890) reputed to be the adventures of H Spencer Ashbee and The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova (1894).

The erotic and exciting adventures of Giacomo Casanova, as recounted in The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova (1894), are rightly famous. All twelve volumes are included in which he gives a well
written and detailed account of all the loves of his life, his adventures all over Europe and his encounters with prominent figures of the period. As the translator’s preface notes:

“A series of adventures wilder and more fantastic than the wildest of romances, written down with the exactitude of a business diary; a view of men and cities from Naples to Berlin, from Madrid and London to Constantinople and St Petersburg; the “vie intime” of the eighteenth century depicted by a man, who to-day sat with cardinals and saluted crowned heads, and to-morrow lurked in dens of profligacy and crime….

...He who opens these wonderful pages is as one who sits in a theatre and looks across the gloom, not on a stage-play, but on another and a vanished world. The curtain draws up, and suddenly … in bright light stands out before us the whole life of the past; the gay dresses, the polished wit, the careless morals, and all the revel and dancing of those merry years before the mighty deluge of the Revolution….

It is indeed a new experience to read the history of a man who, refraining from nothing, has concealed nothing….the friend of popes and kings and noblemen, and of all the male and female ruffians and vagabonds of Europe, abbé, soldier, charlatan, gamester, financier, diplomatist, “viveur”, philosopher, virtuoso, “chemist, fiddler, and buffoon”, each of these, and all of these was Giacomo Casanova,
Seingalt, Knight of the Golden Spur….”

The adventures described in the eleven volumes of the autobiography My Secret Life (1890) are less well known but are in some ways much more erotic that those of Casanova. They are written in a simpler style and are very earthy and vivid.They are reputed to be the love adventures of H Spencer Ashbee, the well known nineteenth century bibliographer. In the preface the author explains how he came to write and publish his memoirs:

“….So I determined to write my private life freely as to fact, and in the spirit of the lustful acts done by me, or witnessed; it is written therefore with absolute truth, and without any regard whatever for what the world calls decency. Decency and voluptuousness in its fullest acceptance, cannot exist together, one would kill the other; the poetry of copulation I have only experienced with a few women, which however neither prevented them, nor me from calling a spade, a spade….”

Among other erotic adventures included in Part 4 are: The Seducing Cardinal’s Amours (c1890) published by Auguste Brancart and containing a priest’s seduction of young girls; Confessions of Madame Vestris (1891) in which she describes vividly her love adventures; Gynecocracy. A Narrative of the Adventures...of Julian Robinson (1893); The Loves of a Musical Student (1897) published by Charles Carrington; Crissie (1899) published by The Alhambra in which a student tells of his adventures in a music hall; Moslem Eroticism, or Adventures of an American Woman in Constantinople (1900).

The erotic magazines The Pearl. A Journal of Facetiae and Voluptuous Reading (1890) and The Chameleon (1894) contain a wide range of material; erotic serials, love adventures, songs, poems, descriptions of sexual practices such as flagellation and accounts of trials of men accused of rape and sodomy.

Many short stories are included in this part several of which concern incest such as Laura Middleton, Her Brother and Her Lover (1890), The Power of Mesmerism (1891) in which a boy manages to commit incest with his sister by hynotising her, Forbidden Fruit (1898) which gives details of a boy’s incest with his aunt and mother.

Other topics covered are flagellation in Lady Gay Spanker’s Tales of Fun & Flagellation (1896) and in The Petticoat Dominant, or Woman’s Revenge (1898); paedophilia in Private Letters from Phyllis to Marie; or, The Art of Child Love (1898), Green Girls (1899) and Flossie, A Venus of Fifteen (1900). Also included are stories about lesbianism, necrophilia, transvestites and sodomy.

Examples of foreign erotic literature, which will give researchers the opportunity to compare and contrast “pornography” in a different culture, include: Therese Philosophe, ou Memoires pour servir a l’histoire de P Dirrag (1900) and Les 120 Journées de Sodome (1904) by the Marquis de Sade, The Lysistrata of Aristophanes (1896) translated and illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley and The Dialogues of Luisa Sigea (1890) translated from the Latin by Nicolas Chorier.

Other interesting items are The Memoirs of Dolly Morton (1899) describing her experiences in helping slaves before the American Civil War giving vivid details on the whipping and rape of slaves and Love and Safety (1908), advice to women on the skill of lovemaking and on contraception.

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