Rereading sex : battles over sexual knowledge and suppression in nineteenth-century America / Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sex customs--United States--History--19th century.

Sex customs.

Sexual ethics--United States--History--19th century.

Sexual ethics.

History.

United States.

Physical Description:

viii, 514 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Alfred A. Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 2002.

Summary:

A professor of American studies presents a lively, scholarly, and often startling exploration of 19th-century American attitudes toward sexuality--what we felt, thought, wrote, and said. 86 illustrations throughout.

Contents:

Part I The Sexual Conversation 17

2 Vernacular Sexual Culture, Commercial Erotica, and Obscene Libel 19

3 Free Thought, Sexual Knowledge, and Evangelical Christianity 45

4 Blasphemy, Birth Control, and Obscenity 70

5 The Masturbation Scare and the Rise of Reform Physiology 86

Part II The New York Scene 123

6 New York and the Emergence of Sporting Culture 125

7 Moral Reformers 144

8 The Sporting Weeklies and Obscene Libel 159

9 Abortion 194

10 Obscenity in the City 210

Part III Additions and Complications 249

11 Placing Sex at the Core of Being 251

12 Blurring the Boundaries 272

Part IV Sexual Knowledge and Obscenity in New York and the Nation 297

13 The Y.M.C.A. of New York, the Civil War, and Anthony Comstock 299

14 Sex Talk in the Open 319

15 Victoria Woodhull 342

16 The Comstock Law 358

17 Comstock's Crusade 386

18 Convictions 404

19 Constitutionality and Resistance: Bennett, Benedict, and Blatchford 419.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 445-492) and index.

ISBN:

037540192X

OCLC:

48965008