Love & Passion in the Eighteenth Century

Julie Peakman offers a journey through the vast amount of amatory pleasures on offer in the eighteenth century. This was a culture which both celebrated sex and women’ sexuality, while simultaneously robbing women of their sexual freedom, subjugating them to a life of prostitution and making sex outside of marriage something to be frowned upon. It was a time when sodomy was a hangable offence, yet flagellation was an acceptable practice. Sex was preached about from the pulpit, written about in scandal sheets and played out in drawing rooms and brothels. Julie Peakman is an historian of sexuality and the 18th Century, and author of The Pleasure’s All Mine, a History of Perverse Sex.