The Solitary Vice will make you rethink your own relation to reading. Brottman is wonderful at reminding us what a very complicated act - of fantasy, recompense, adventurism and (sometimes) perversity - reading a book can be....

The claim that masturbation isn t good for you didn t just come out of nowhere. As April Haynes shows, a range of feminist reformers in nineteenth century America all agreed that the solitary vice caused untold suffering and death; that women and girls masturbated as frequently as did men and boys; that they did so because they lacked access to sexual information; and that therefore, female sex education would save lives. Haynes, in short shows that nascent feminists remade what might have been a puritanical crusade into a basis for envisioning their own sexual self-masterywith mixed results, for Haynes also tells the story of how, before the advent of sexology or even the professionalization of medicine, a great silent army of evangelical female reformers first popularized, then institutionalized, the normative sexual discourse of the nineteenth century."

A historical account of masturbation as a moral issue and cultural taboo.

Contains the articles by Ellen G. White which appeared in the book A Solemn Appeal Relative to the Solitary Vice and Abuses and Excesses of the Marriage Relation, published in 1870 by the Steam Press of Battle Creek. Articles include Appeal to Mothers, The Marriage Relation, Obedience to the Law of God, Female Modesty, and Sentimentalism.About the AuthorEllen Gould (Harmon) White, co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, writer, lecturer, and counselor, and one upon whom Seventh-day Adventists believe the gift of prophecy was bestowed, was born in Gorham, Maine, November 26, 1827, one of eight children of Robert and Eunice Harmon.During her seventy years of active service to the church, she found time to write voluminously. She is credited with having written 100,000 manuscript pages. This remarkable legacy to the church could alone have occupied Ellen White's entire life, had she dedicated her time to little else but writing. However, her service for the church embraces much more than writing. Her diaries tell of her public work, her travels, her personal labor, hostessing, contacts with neighbors, as well as of her being a mother and housewife. God blessed her abundantly in these activities. Her ambitions and concerns, her satisfactions and joys, her sorrows--her whole life--were for the advancement of the cause she loved.Ellen G White is reputed to be the most translated woman author and the most translated author in American history. After a full life dedicated to the service of God and others, she died on July 16, 1915, confidently trusting in Him whom she believed.