The sniggeringly pseudonymous Roger Pheuquewell’s contribution to a series of 18th-century erotic novels imagining the female body as land needing to be “ploughed” is among a collection of books from the British Library’s “Private Case” — a collection of obscene titles kept locked away for more than a century that are finally being shared with a wider audience.
First published in the 1740s, the Merryland books were written by different authors, all describing the female anatomy metaphorically as land ripe for exploration.
Thomas Stretzer, who died in 1738, was the then-anonymous author of A New Description of Merryland, credited in a 1741 edition to one Roger Pheuquewell.
Together with an 18th-century directory of sex workers in the Covent Garden area of London, and the violent erotic works of the Marquis de Sade, the Merryland books are among the 2,500 volumes in the British Library’s Private Case collection.
The volumes have now been digitized, and are being made available online by the publisher Gale as part of its Archives of Sexuality and Gender academic research resource.
“There was essentially a series of cupboards in the keeper’s room from the 1850s, where material that was deemed to be unsuitable was kept locked away — usually because of its obscene nature, so pretty much anything to do with sex,” said Maddy Smith, curator of printed collections. “It was added to throughout the 19th century, and this carried on until around 1960, when attitudes to sexuality were changing.”
The collection dates back to 1658, with the book Rare Verities: the Cabinet of Venus Unlocked and Her Secrets Laid Open — the double entendre very much intended, Smith said.
It also features 40 copies of John Cleland’s 18th-century novel Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, which is considered to be the first pornographic novel written in the English language; an account of the sexual exploits of a gentleman named Walter in Victorian England, My Secret Life; and Memoirs of Dolly Morton, an 1899 novel about the erotic adventures of a Quaker woman in the US south before the civil war.
Teleny or The Reverse of the Medal tells of the tragic relationship between a young Frenchman and a Hungarian pianist. Authorship of the novel has been attributed to Oscar Wilde and members of his circle in the late 19th century.
“Nowadays we are more used to erotica, and fiction in general, including gay characters and storylines, but in the past this was pretty shocking,” Smith said. “Teleny is one of the earliest works of male gay erotic fiction in English and it was particularly shocking at the time.”
The Private Case collection has been accessible to the public through the library’s rare books collection since the 1960s, but the digitization project with Gale means the titles will now be available to a much wider audience.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese