English Sexualities, 1700-1800

Social History in Perspective

by Tim Hitchcock

The eighteenth century witnessed the birth of the first recognisably modern sexual identities. This book charts the development of those identities through the examination of pornography, sexual practice, medical belief, social policy, and the cultures of homosexuality, lesbianism, and heterosexually. It concludes that the century saw a sexual revolution in which sexual practice itself changed. From a culture in which mutual masturbation and mutable sexual categories were the norm, eighteenth-century England became a society increasingly concerned to foster penetrative and procreative sexual behaviour. In the process, newly harsh divisions between men and women were created and reinforced, and new models of both femininity and masculinity were created. This book charts a series of complex interrelationships between changes in language and practice, and suggests that men were increasingly encouraged to invest their masculinity in an exclusive desire for the opposite sex, while women were pushed towards a sexual identity in which motherhood came to dominate, and in which female lust was denigrated or denied. At the same time, new homosexual and lesbian identities were likewise created and denigrated.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

184 pages, Paperback

First published March 5, 1997

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Tim Hitchcock has degrees from the University of California at Berkeley (1980) and the University of Oxford (1985). He began his academic career at the then Polytechnic of North London, where he taught early modern social history and humanities computing from 1989 onwards, searving as Head of the History group from 1992. In 1997 he took up a Readership at the University of Hertfordshire, where he served as Dean of Research for Humanities and Education, and from 2003, as founding director of the Social Science Arts and Humanities Research Institute. He was awarded a Professorship in Eighteenth-Century History in 2001; and was appointed Professor of Digital History at the University of Sussex in 2013; and co-director of the Sussex Humanities Lab in 2015.

Hitchcock has published twelve books on the histories of gender, sexuality and poverty focussed primarily on eighteenth-century London. With Professor Robert Shoemaker and others he has also created a series of websites helping to give direct public access to 37 billion words of primary sources evidencing the history of Britain. Designed to underpin the writing of a new 'history from below', these sites include: The Old Bailey Online, 1674 to 1913 (www.oldbaileyonline.org); London Lives, 1690-1800 (www.londonlives.org); Locating London's Past (www.locatinglondon.org); and Connected Histories (www.connectedhistories.org). Jointly with Robert Shoemaker, in 2011 he was given the History Today, Trustees' Award for his contribution to historical research. Hitchcock was a founding member of the AHRC Advisory Board and Peer Review College, and is currently a member and past chair of the AHRC's Digital Transformations Advisory Group. He also sits on the British Library's Advisory Council. From 2012, he has been Co-Investigator on the AHRC funded project: The Digital Panopticon: The Global Impact of London Punishments, 1780-1925.

-- from http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/336034

Reviews

[Lucy Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't sure whether I can include things read for my degree on here or not, but I genuinely enjoyed this one (probably because it was about gay people, let's be honest) and it's a book that I have read so why not? Very useful for my essay and generally an interesting read.

[G r e g :) · Rating 3 out of 5]

An extremely brief but concise overview of 18th century sexuality. Good as an introduction and very learned in its understanding of the historiography, but not sufficient to gain a truly holistic understanding of 18th century sexuality. This can be read very quickly, so would go very nicely with the works of Faramerz Dabhoiwala (especially ‘the origin of sex’) to get a wider picture

[Enya · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was absolutely fascinating though I may be a bad judge since it's my first introduction into the history of sexuality and I've thoroughly enjoyed it. For me the big seller of this book is the case studies complete with (typed up) primary source documents to look at such as diaries, letters etc. They gave such a human feel to all of the analysis that it was hard to out down.

Also, the final chapter and conclusion are highly relevant to the aims and issues raised by modern day GB feminist movements and I'd consider this or something similar as essential reading for anyone curious about where, how and why sexual identities which are deeply engrained in our society today came to be about.

[Ashra · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Gradually, over the course of the century women were encouraged to see themselves as passive, lacking sexual desire and instead focusing their whole sexual being on the one act of losing their virginity. Women went from a situation in which they were encouraged to believe themselves to be lustful and full of a barely controllable desire, to being sexually numb.
"At the same time, men who had begun the century being encouraged to believe that their own sexual desires could be easily controlled by their greater rationality and mental strength, who were being taught that they had a duty to be sexually responsible, ended the period being told that their sexual desires were largely beyond their control" (100).

An ENLIGHTENING volume despite how short it is!

There's a lot of misconceptions about sexuality in the 18th century. I'd always thought that people acted pretty chaste back then, but they really didn't. Heck, leap frog was NOT an innocent game back then (people didn't wear undergarments). Queer people certainly did exist, but it was seen more as a thing anyone could do, a "sinful" but normal human behavior, rather than an identity that some people ascribe themselves to. And prostitutes owned themselves! Not only that, but a lot of them got married after using the job to save up money.

I'm gonna be rotating that quote at the top in my head for a good long time. I hadn't realized that the end of the 18th century signaled a lot of the more backwards sexual beliefs that are deeply rooted in society.

It was a little tough to get through at times, but certainly worth the read!