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.

This sadly hilarious little book was penned anonymously in 1839 with, we're certain, all the best intentions. While acknowledging the widespread practice of masturbation, it condemns it in the most hysterical tones and attributes to it many of the most virulent diseases of the day. We can only pity and have empathy for the Victorian readers of this book while still finding it's prose and advice amusing. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE or download a sample.