Enfilade

Forthcoming from Reaktion, with distribution by The University of Chicago Press:

Julie Peakman, Libertine London: Sex in the Eighteenth-Century Metropolis (London: Reaktion Books, 2024), 352 pages, £25 / $40.

An eye-opening and richly detailed history of women’s sexuality that upends entrenched perceptions of the long eighteenth century.

Libertine London investigates the sex lives of women throughout the period 1680 to 1830, known as the long eighteenth century. The book uncovers the various experiences of women, whether as mistresses, adultresses, or as participants in the sex trade. From renowned courtesans to downtrodden streetwalkers, it examines the multifaceted lives of these women within brothels, on stage, and even behind bars. Based on new research in court transcripts, asylum records, magazines, pamphlets, satires, songs, theater plays, and erotica, Libertine London reveals the gruesome treatment of women who were sexually active outside of marriage. Julie Peakman looks at sex from women’s points of view, undercutting the traditional image of the bawdy eighteenth century to expose a more sordid side, which often left women distressed, ostracized, and vilified for their sexual behavior.

Julie Peakman is a historian and author of many books on the history of sexuality, including Amatory Pleasures: Explorations in Eighteenth-Century Sexual Cultures. She lives in London.

c o n t e n t s

Prologue
1  Rambles through London
2  Street-Walkers
3  Brazen Bawds
4  Courtesans
5  Public Opinion: The Way with Whores
6  Stage Strumpets
7  Libertines and Their Fashions
8  Quacks, the Pox, and the New Sexual Predators
9  Mad about the Boy
10  Rape on Trial
11  Seduction, Abduction, and Adultery
12  Royal Mistresses

References
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index