Historians have traditionally neglected relationships between slave men and women during the antebellum period. In Chains of Love, historian Emily West remedies this situation by investigating the social and cultural history of slave relationships in the very heart of the South. Focusing on South Carolina, West deals directly with the most intimate areas of the slave experience including courtship, love and affection between spouses, the abuse of slave women by white men, and the devastating consequences of forced separations. Slaves fought these separations through cross-gender bonding and cross-plantation marriages, illustrating West's thesis about slave marriage as a fierce source of resistance to the oppression of slavery in general. Making expert use of sources such as the Works Progress Administration narratives, slave autobiographies, slave owner records, and church records, this book-length study is the first to focus on the primacy of spousal support as a means for facing oppression. Chains of Love provides telling insights into the nature of the slave family that emerged from these tensions, celebrates its strength, and reveals new dimensions to the slaves' struggle for freedom.

Why a monumental diary by an aunt and niece who published poetry together as “Michael Field”—and who were partners and lovers for decades—is one of the great unknown works of late-Victorian and early modernist literature Michael Field, the renowned late-Victorian poet, was well known to be the pseudonym of Katharine Bradley (1846–1914) and her niece, Edith Cooper (1862–1913). Less well known is that for three decades, the women privately maintained a romantic relationship and kept a double diary, sharing the page as they shared a bed and eventually producing a 9,500-page, twenty-nine-volume story of love, life, and art in the fin de siècle. In Chains of Love and Beauty, the first book about the diary, Carolyn Dever makes the case for this work as a great unknown “novel” of the nineteenth century and as a bridge between George Eliot and Virginia Woolf, Victorian marriage plot and modernist experimentation. While Bradley and Cooper remained committed to publishing poetry under a single, male pseudonym, the diary, which they entitled Works and Days and hoped would be published after their deaths, allowed them to realize literary ambitions that were unfulfilled during their lifetime. The women also used the diary, which remains largely unpublished, to negotiate their art, desires, and frustrations, as well as their relationships with contemporary literary celebrities, including Robert Browning, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, and Walter Pater. Showing for the first time why Works and Days is a great experimental work of late-Victorian and early modernist writing, one that sheds startling new light on gender, sexuality, and authorship, Dever reveals how Bradley and Cooper wrote their shared life as art, and their art as life, on pages of intimacy that they wanted to share with the world.

This book is a classic romance, originally published in 1983. After escaping from an abusive relationship, Cathy Whiteheart has sworn off men. She has no desire to date, and she’s not looking for love. When her meddling sister, drags Cathy on to Sinclair MacDonald’s yacht, neither the handsome man nor his considerable charm is going to change Cathy’s mind. At least not at first. But Sinclair is handsome and kind and when the two are thrown together time and time again, he starts to make Cathy long for the kind of love she’s always dreamed of.

Several Earth women have disappeared, their trail leading to Xarta, a BDSM planet. Marina, Earth intergalactic investigator, knows that solving this case means a long-awaited promotion. But in order to find the missing women, she'll have to go undercover as a bondage slave on Xarta, something the strong, capable woman wants no part of. Kaden is a Dom and a native of Xarta. He's also an Intergalactic Marshall, sworn to break up the slave trading ring. His job is to take Marina as his submissive and train her while they're working undercover to expose the slavers and rescue the women. Reluctantly, Marina agrees to act as a submissive, vowing to both herself and to Kaden that her relationship with him is nothing but an act. Until Kaden shows her a side of life that calls to her in ways she didn't expect. Note: Bound To Trust contains light erotic scenes where females explore their sexuality with other females.

Welcome to The Chains of Conformity, a deeply personal and profoundly philosophical journey into the heart of existence. Within these pages, we embark on a quest for truth, challenging societal norms, religious dogma, and our own deepest fears. Join me on this introspective exploration as we confront the fundamental questions of human experience: Who am I? Why am I here? What lies beyond the veil of suffering and fear? Through raw, unflinching introspection and intellectual curiosity, we'll delve into the complexities of identity, belief systems, and the human condition. This isn't a guidebook or a manifesto – it's an invitation to join a shared inquiry into the mysteries of life. Together, let's venture into the uncharted territories of the self, where the boundaries of certainty blur and the horizon of possibility expands. Prepare to question, to seek, and to discover.

This timely volume ventures into the subject of sadomasochism in varied aspects of medieval life. Saint’s Lives and mystical treatises provide evidence of failed sadism and empowering masochism. Literary culture in the form of epics and courtly tales preserve stories of eroticised power. These exciting chapters join together to form a picture of medieval culture that is kinky in its practice and deeply psychological at its core.