The facts of life
Subtitle: the creation of sexual knowledge in Britain, 1650-1950
By: Roy Porter and Lesley Hall.
Contributors: Hall, Lesley A.
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: New Haven
Language: eng
Number of pages: 415
Subjects: Sexology -- Great Britain -- History; Sex instruction literature -- Great Britain -- History
Description: This remarkable study presents the first detailed and scholarly analysis of the creation of sexual knowledge in Britain. Surveying the period between the mid-seventeenth and the mid-twentieth centuries, it examines the major texts which established and authorised sexual knowledge and sexual practices. Porter and Hall then explore the various kinds of backgroundssexual, moral, religious, scientific, medical, domestic, social and cultural - without which these texts are unintelligible.

And they examine their authors (some famous, some obscure, some anonymous), their careers, and the motives for involvement in medico-moral campaigns that were often thought unsavoury and commonly led to criticism and censure.

The Facts of Life also assesses the wider impact of the publication of sexual knowledge and especially of sex advice literature, and explores the interplay between expertise, therapy, social mores and behaviour. Chapters on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries discuss prostitution, contagious diseases and gender relations, and consider debates on sexual issues and associated revelations of personal experience.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [354]-397) and index.