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Regency Sex Ed
How did women in 19th-century Europe learn about the birds and the bees?
The Regency-era protagonist of Ne’er Duke Well, Selina Ravenscroft, runs a circulating library with a secret catalog of books for ladies, including racy memoirs, erotic poetry, early feminist tracts, and works explicitly designed for sexual education. In 1826, frequently jailed British reformer and radical publisher Richard Carlile put out the first well-known sexual education tract specifically designed for women: Every Woman’s Book, or What Is Love? Philippa’s hilarious “Inserts himself where?” line of dialogue suggests a particular understanding of the historical past as prim, proper, and thoroughly desexualized; this ahistorical attitude can lead readers to push back against novels that portray a more complete version of Regency-era sexuality.
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