History of sexuality: My own writings

Do contact me if you are unable to access any of these articles or chapters and I will do my best to supply a copy.

'"Somehow very distasteful": doctors, men and sexual problems between the wars' Journal of Contemporary History Vol 20 no 4, Oct 1985

'From Self-Preservation to Love without Fear: medical and lay writers of sexual advice 1850-1950, from William Acton to Eustace Chesser' Bulletin of the Society for the Social History of Medicine, no 39, Dec 1986

Hidden Anxieties: Male Sexuality 1900-1950 (Polity Press/Basil Blackwell Inc, 1991)

'Forbidden by God, despised by men: masturbation, medical warnings, moral panic and manhood in Britain, 1850-1950' Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol 2, Jan 1992, reprinted in Forbidden History: The State, Society, and the Regulation of Sexuality in Modern Europe edited by Professor John C. Fout, University of Chicago Press, 1992

'Uniting Science and Sensibility: Marie Stopes and the narratives of marriage in the 1920s' in Rediscovering Forgotten Radicals: British Women Writers 1889-1939 edited by Angela Ingram and Daphne Patai, University of North Carolina Press, 1993

'"The Cinderella of Medicine": sexually-transmitted diseases in Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' Genitourinary Medicine, 69, Aug 1993 [Free downloadable version available via PubMed Central]

'Questions of Control and Choice: Women and Reproduction in Britain since 1900' in Birth and Breeding: the politics of reproduction in modern Britain. Catalogue of an exhibition at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, Oct 1993-Feb 1994: now available online

'"The English have hot-water bottles": the morganatic marriage between the British medical profession and sexology since William Acton' in Sexual knowledge, sexual science: the history of attitudes to sexuality edited by Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich, Cambridge University Press, 1994

'Review Article: Havelock's Heirs: The history of sexuality today' Social History of Medicine, 7/1, April 1994

'Sex in Britain: archival resources' Forum on Sexuality Newsletter, No. 8, Nov 1994

[with Roy Porter] The Facts of Life: the creation of sexual knowledge in Britain, 1680-1950, Yale University Press, 1995

'Sex in the archives' Archives: the Journal of the British Records Association Vol. XXII, no. 93, 1995

'"Disinterested enthusiasm for sexual misconduct": the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, 1913-1947' Journal of Contemporary History Vol. 30, 1995

'The Archives of Birth Control in Britain' Journal of the Society of Archivists Vol. 16, 1995

'Perspective: The age-old and hidden torments of impotence' British Journal of Sexual Medicine, Nov/Dec 1995, Vol 22 no 6

'New Agendas: Sex Education in Britain, 1870-1995' History Review: The Journal for History students, Dec 1995, no 23

'Impotent ghosts from no-man's land, flappers' boyfriends, or crypto-patriarchs? men, sex and social change in 1920s Britain' Social History, Vol. 21, 1996

'"No virtue in evasion": feminism and sex reform in Britain, 1880-1920', in Civilisation,Sexuality and Social Life in Historical Context, edited by Judith Forrai, The Institute of the History of Medicine and Social Medicine, Budapest, 1996

'Marie Stopes and her correspondents: personalising population decline in an era of demographic change', in Marie Stopes, Eugenics and the English Birth Control Movement: proceedings of a conference organised by the Galton Institute, London, 1996, edited by Robert A. Peel, The Galton Institute, London, 1997

'Les mutations de malthusianisme: l'evolution de la perception politique et morale du birth control en Grande-Bretagne', in Demographie et Politique edited by Francis Ronsin, Herve le Bras, and Elisabeth Zucker-Rouvillois, Editions Universitaire de Dijon, 1997

'Heroes or villains? Reconsidering British fin de siecle sexology and its impact' in New Sexual Agendas, edited by Lynne Segal, Macmillan, 1997

'Marie Stopes and her correspondents: public and private faces' Ethical Record: The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society, Vol 102 no 3, Mar 1997

'"I have never met the normal woman": Stella Browne and the politics of womanhood' Women's History Review, Vol 6 no 2, 1997

'Suffrage, Sex and Science', in The Women's Suffrage Movement, New Feminist Perspectives, edited by Maroula Joannou and June Purvis, Manchester University Press, 1998

'Women, Feminism and Eugenics', in Essays in the History of Eugenics: proceedings of a conference organised by the Galton Institute, London, 1997, edited by Robert A. Peel, The Galton Institute, London, 1998

'Feminist reconfigurations of heterosexuality in the 1920s', in Sexology and Culture: Labelling Bodies and Desires, edited by Lucy Bland and Laura Doan, Polity Press, 1998

Introduction to sections 'Heterosexuality, Marriage and Sex Manuals', 'Birth Control and Abortion' and 'Miscellaneous sexual behaviours' in Sexology Uncensored: A Source Book, edited by Lucy Bland and Laura Doan, Polity Press, 1998

'Sexual behaviour' in The Social Science Encyclopedia-Edition 2, Routledge, London

'The Uterus in History' (themed review), Gender and History, 11:1, 1999

(Co-editor) Franz Eder, Lesley Hall and Gert Hekma (eds.) Sexual Cultures in Europe, 1700-2000, 1: National Histories and 2: Themes in Sexuality, Manchester University Press, 1999. For further details about contents, go here

'The sexual culture of Great Britain since 1700: some persisting themes' in Sexual Cultures in Europe, 1700-2000, 1: National Histories, edited by Franz Eder, Lesley Hall and Gert Hekma, Manchester University Press, 1999

'"War always brings it on'": War, STDs, the military, and the civilian population in Britain, 1850-1950' in Medicine and Modern Warfare, edited by Roger Cooter, Mark Harrison, and Steve Sturdy: Clio Medica 55 Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2000

'"What a lot there is still to do': Stella Browne (1880-1955) carrying the struggle ever onward', in A Suffrage Reader: Charting directions in British suffrage history, 1850-1950, edited by Claire Eustance, Joan Ryan, and Laura Ugolini, Leicester University Press/Cassell, 2000

Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1880, Macmillan, 2000. Further details. Online review by Paula Bartley at 'Reviews in History' plus my response

'The Sexual Body' in Medicine in the Twentieth Century, edited by Roger Cooter and John Pickstone, Harwood International, 2000

'Malthusian Mutations: the changing political perceptions and moral meanings of birth control in Britain' in Malthus, Medicine, and Morality: 'Malthusianism' since 1798, edited by Brian Dolan, Rodopi, 2000, Clio Medica 59

(Ed.) Marie Stopes: Birth Control and Other Writings 5 volumes, Bristol, Thoemmes Press, 2000

'"Not a domestic utensil, but a woman and a citizen": Stella Browne on women, health and society' in Regenerating England: science, medicine and culture in inter-war Britain, edited by Chris Lawrence and Anna-K Mayer, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000: Clio Medica 60:

Entries for 'Malthusianism', 'Venereal Disease', in Reader's Guide to the History of Science, edited by Arne Hessenbruch, Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000

'Masturbation', in Peter N Stearns (ed.), Encyclopedia of European Social History. Vol. 4, New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 2000

'The Next Generation; Stella Browne, the new woman as freewoman', in Angelique Richardson and Chris Willis, The New Woman in Fiction and Fact, London, Palgrave/Macmillan, 2001: further info

(Ed. with Roger Davidson), Sex, Sin and Suffering: venereal diseases in European social context since 1870 (Routledge, 2001) NOW IN PAPERBACK and available on Kindle: introduction (jointly written) and chapter on 'Venereal diseases in Britain from the Contagious Diseases Acts to the National Health Service. Online review by Virgina Berridge at Reviews in History, and our response

'Sexuality', Women in Twentieth Century Britain, edited by Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Pearson Educational, 2001

Entries in the Oxford Companion to the Body, Oxford University Press (2001), on abortion, clitoris, condom, contraception, eroticism, fetishism, freemartin, hermaphrodite, impotence, libido, masturbation, necrophilia, paedophilia, perversion, sexuality, sexual orientation, sado-masochism, transvestism, vasectomy; further details

'"A suitable job for a woman"?: women doctors and birth control before 1950' in Women and Modern Medicine, edited by Larry Conrad and Anne Hardy, Rodopi, Clio Medica 61, 2001

'"Arrows of Desire": British Sexual Utopians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and the Politics of Health', in Free Love and the Labour Movement: papers presented at the workshop 'Free Love and the Labour Movement', International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, 6-7 October 2000, International Institute of Social History Research Papers 40, Amsterdam, 2001

Entries for 'Abortion', 'Birth Control' and 'Sex Education' (in the British context), and on the trials for obscenity of Havelock Ellis's Sexual Inversion and Eustace Chesser's Love without fear in Censorship: An International Encyclopedia, edited by Derek Jones, Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001

'Eugenics' in the Oxford Illustrated Companion to Medicine, 2001

'"The Reserved Occupation"? Prostitution in the Second World War', Women's History Magazine, no 41, June 2002

Entries for 'Contraception' and 'Sex' in the Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science (2003)

'Eyes tightly shut, lying rigidly still and thinking of England? British women and sex from Marie Stopes to Hite', in Sexual Pedagogies: Teaching Sex in America, Britain, and Australia, 1879-2000, edited by Michelle Martin and Claudia Nelson, Palgrave (2003)

'"It was the doctors who were suffering from it": the history of masturbatory insanity revisited', in Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education 39/6 Dec 2003

'Birds, Bees and General Embarrassment: sex education in Britain from social purity to Section 28', in Public or Private Education?: Lessons from History, edited by Richard Aldrich, Woburn Press, 2004

'Pain and the Erotic', on the website in connection with the Wellcome Trust/Science Museum exhibition 'Pain', Feb 2004

'"In great haste": the personal and the political in the letters of F. W. Stella Browne (1880-1955), feminist socialist sex radical', in Gender and Politics in the Age of Letter-Writing: 1750-2000, edited by Caroline Bland and Maire Cross, Ashgate, 2004

'No sex please, we’re socialists: the British Labour Party closes its eyes and thinks of the electorate', in Meetings & Alcoves: The Left and Sexuality in Europe and the United States since 1850, edited by Jesse Batton, Thomas Bouchet and Tania Regin Territoires contemporains, cahiers de l’IHC, (l’Institut d’histoire contemporain, Dijon), no. 8, 2004

'Hauling down the Double Standard: feminism, social purity, and sexual science in late nineteenth century Britain', Gender and History, Vol 16 no 1, April 2004

'Sexuality', in The Companion to Nineteenth Century Britain, edited by Chris Williams, Blackwell, 2004

'"A deep debt of gratitude for your heroic frankness": Marie Stopes, marriage advice, and readers' reactions', in La Mediazione Matrimoniale: Il terzo (in)comodo in Europa fra Otto e Novecento , edited by Bruno Wanrooij, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Rome, 2004

Entries for William Acton, F. W. Stella Browne, Eustace Chesser, Margaret Shurmer Sibthorp, Marie Stopes, Charlotte Carmichael Stopes, Alice Vickery, Helen Wilson, and Helena Wright, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004

'What shall we do with the poxy sailor? venereal diseases in the British mercantile marine, 1850-1950, Journal for Maritime Research, Oct 2004

'Sexuality', in A Companion to Contemporary Britain: 1939-2000, edited by Paul Addison and Harriet Jones, Blackwell, 2005

Outspoken Women: Women writing about sex, 1870-1969, Routledge, 2005

'Sexuality and the Psyche', in The Companion to Europe, 1900-1945, edited by Gordon Martel, Blackwell, 2005

'A masculine mythology suppressing and distorting all the facts': British women contesting the concept of the male-as-norm, 1870-1930' in Histories of the Normal and the Abnormal: Social and cultural histories of norms and normativity, edited by Waltraud Ernst, Routledge, 2006

'Havelock Ellis', in John Merriman and J. M. Winter (Eds) Scribner Library of Modern Europe - Europe 1789 to 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of Industry and Empire, Thomson Gale (2006): I only discovered in 2019 that this had actually been published...

'Sex Research: History', in Encyclopedia of Sociology, edited by George Ritzer, Blackwell, 2007

'Arrows of desire: British sex utopians and the politics of health', in Medicine, Madness and Social History: Essays in memory of Roy Porter, edited by Roberta Bivins and John Pickstone, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007

'Prostitution' in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Love, Courtship, and Sexuality Through History Vol 5, The Nineteenth Century, edited by Susan Mumm, Greenwood Press, 2007

Naomi Mitchison: A Profile of her life and work, Aqueduct Press Conversation Pieces, 2007

'Eugenics, sex and the state: some introductory remarks', Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Vol 39, 2008

'Stella Browne and the German Radical Sex Reform Tradition', in Sisters of Subversion: Histories of Women, Tales of Gender: A Festschrift edited by Willem de Blecourt, AMB Amsterdam, 2008

'In Ignorance and in Knowledge: reflections on the history of sex education in Britain', in Roger Davidson and Lutz Sauerteig (eds) Shaping Sexual Knowledge: A Cultural History of Sex Education in Twentieth Century Europe, Routledge, 2009

with Lucy Bland, 'Eugenics in Britain: The view from the metropole', in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics, 2010, Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine (eds)

'No Sex, Please, We're Socialists': The Labour Party prefers to close its eyes and think of the electorate', Socialist History, 36, 2010

The Life and Times of Stella Browne: feminist and free spirit, IB Tauris, 2011

‘"The wo that is in marriage": Abstinence in practice and principle in British marriages, 1890s-1940s', in Leen van Molle, Kaat Wils and Evert Peeters (eds) Beyond Pleasure: Cultures of Modern Asceticism, Berghahn Books, 2011

'Sessualita e storia: obiettive raggiunti e sfide future', 'In Evidenza: Sessualita e storia', Contemporanea, XIV/4, ottobre 2011

Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1880, 2nd revised and expanded edition, Palgrave Macmillan, Gender and History series

'Articulating abortion in interwar Britain', Women's History Magazine, Issue 70, Autumn 2012

The Subject is Obscene: No Lady Would Dream of Alluding to it": Marie Stopes' courtroom dramas', Women's History Review, special issue on 'Performing the Self: Women's Lives in Historical Perspective', 2013

'Sexual Diseases post-1750' in Sarah Toulalan, Kate Fisher (eds) The Routledge History of Sex and the Body, 1500 to the Present, 2013 publishers' info

'Sexology without Frontiers? Sexual Science in the UK in the 20th Century - Records in the Wellcome Library and Beyond', Sexuologie - Zeitschrift für Sexualmedizin, Sexualtherapie und Sexualwissenschaft, Band 20 / 2013

Articles on 'Sexology and Feminism' and 'Venereal Diseases, history' in The International Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality, First Edition. Edited by Patricia Whelehan and Anne Bolin, Wiley, 2015

'The Victorians: Our Others, Our Selves?' in Kate Fisher and Rebecca Langlands (eds), Sex, Knowledge, and Receptions of the Past, Oxford University Press, 2015

'"Sentimental Follies" or "Instruments of Tremendous Uplift"? reconsidering women's same-sex relationships in interwar Britain', Women's History Review, Special Issue: Love, Desire and Melancholy: inspired by Constance Maynard, 2016

The British Society of the Study of Sex Psychology: 'Advocating the Culture of Unnatural and Criminal Practices'? in Simon Avery, Katherine M. Graham (eds), Sex, Time and Place: Queer Histories of London, c.1850 to the Present (2016)

‘"Sons of Belial": Contaminated/Contaminating Victorian Male Bodies', in Andrew Mangham and Daniel Lea (eds), The Male Body in Medicine and Literature (2018)

'Movements to separate sex and reproduction', in N. Hopwood, R. Flemming and L. Kassell, Cultures of Reproduction from Antiquity to the Present Day (Cambridge University Press, 2018)

'Foreword', to Jessica Borge, Protective Practices: A History of the London Rubber Company and the Condom Business (McGill-Queens UP, 2020)

'The Bedborough Case, 1898: "A Curious Gonfalon Round Which to Fight"', in David Nash, Anne-Marie Kilday (eds), Fair and Unfair Trials in the British Isles, 1800-1940: Microhistories of Justice and Injustice (Bloomsbury, 2020)

Entries for Norman Haire (2020) and Eden & Cedar Paul (2018) in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Abortion and Birth Control, on the Victorian Web: Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Age of Victoria

'The Afterlives of Victorian Scandals', in Brenda Ayres & Sarah E. Maier (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture (Routledge, 2023)

'Send in the Clones?: Naomi Mitchison and the Politics of Reproduction and Motherhood' in James Purdon (ed), Naomi Mitchison: A Writer in Time (Edinburgh University Press, 2023)

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society: Victorian Abortion & Birth Control: Ep. 133 Friday, July 28, 2023: podcast

'R v Bourne (1938)' in Rosemary Auchmuty, Erika Rackley, Mari Takayanagi (eds), Women’s Legal Landmarks in the Interwar Years: Not for Want of Trying (Hart, 2024)

Forthcoming

Back to