Pickering and Chatto's first volume of eighteenth-century British erotic literature is less Playboy and more pamphlet. Much of the volume's bulk is comprised of an ongoing conversation about the "pleasures" of sex. These pleasures, however, are rarely actual pleasures and instead warnings depicted through character against married life, single life, sex, and abstinence - whatever position the author takes. Inspired by "The Fifteen Pleasures of Single Life," published by John Nutt in 1701 with an unknown author, the conversation was entered by those wishing to rail against prostitution, those wishing to promote celibacy, and those celebrating debauchery. From the "The Comfort of Marriage" to the "The Fifteen Comforts of Whoring" to "The Whore and Bawd's Answer to the Fifteen Comforts of Whoring," the text became a bit of a publishing phenomenon. All were published within the first 10 years of the eighteenth-century and due to the insinuation of sex wound up labeled erotic literature.
Interestingly the intro by Alexander Pettit, using a considerable aount of info from Trumbauch's Sex and the Gender Revolution, paints a picture of eighteenth-century prostitution considerably different than my previous research in the field. Is he merely writing about the early eighteenth-century or the entire era? His depiction of prostitution is more inline with Victorian streetwalkers than well-kept brothels. I'm also curious about class issues within prostitution. Was there a class-based prostitution system?
The volume also contains a few other interesting pieces including "The Insinuating Bawd," which is an indictment of a bawd for the debauching of a young girl (the bawd talks her into sex) and "The London Bawd." Both will be useful for my dissertation.
