"The authors have amassed a great deal of evidence that provides fascinating insights into how people throughout the long eighteenth century understood sexuality, and experienced different sexual behaviours. The book eloquently argues that a monolithic narrative that foregrounds the Enlightenment as the agent for increasingly liberal and secular understandings of sexuality is misleading. Rather, the sexual experiences of men and women across the eighteenth-century provoked contradictions, required critique and were, above all else, exceedingly varied." --Journal of Ecclesiastical History

"Richly and convincingly substantiated ... A volume that should be on the bookshelves of all serious students of eighteenthcentury British history." --Journal of British Studies