Lesley A. Hall

Volume 15 in the Conversation Pieces Series

Naomi Mitchison

Male Sexuality, 1900-1950

Hidden Anxieties

Roger Davidson

This volume brings together for the first time a series of studies on the social history of venereal disease in modern Europe and its former colonies. It explores, from a comparative perspective, the responses of legal, medical and political authorities to the 'Great Scourge'. In particular, how such responses reflected and shaped social attitudes towards sexuality and social relationships of class, gender, generation and race.

Venereal Disease and European Society since 1870

Sex, Sin and Suffering

Male sexuality is often seen as simple and monolithic, the 'normal' male appears unchanging and unproblematic. In this major new study, Lesley Hall examines the historical figure of the sexually 'normal' male and addresses the assumptions inherent in this concept. Common male difficulties are concealed by assumptions that desire is crude, insurgent, spontaneous and unproblematic, and are therefore ignored. Hidden Anxieties explores this view, examining the letters of thousands of men who wrote to Marie Stopes, author of Married Love, seeking help for problems that were otherwise unmentionable. Hall clarifies the concepts of the 'normal' male which changed considerably between the late Victorian era and the end of World War II. While examining these evolving ideas, Hall shows how men, as well as women, were the victims of a repressive climate in relation to their sexuality.

Male Sexuality, 1900 - 1950

This is the first full length biography of radical reformer Stella Browne, whose life, ideas and activities overturn so many assumptions about early twentieth-century politics and feminism. Stella Brown offers her biographer a window onto many neglected areas of twentieth-century history, and this context is vividly brought to life in this book. Lesley Hall's biography explores Stella Browne's life and times, from her upbringing in Nova Scotia into her political apprenticeship and life from militant suffragism in the early 1900s through her internationalism and involvement with Margaret Sanger and the birth control and sex-reform movements, her work among pacifist, Communist and feminist circles in North America, the UK and Continental Europe. Her relations with such as Rebecca West, Winifred Holtby, Havelock Ellist, Dora Russell and C.K.Ogden are central to the biography. Based on extensive and new research in primary sources in Britain, Europe and North America and on Stella Browne's own copious (and scattered) writings, this biography gives as rounded a portrait as is possible of this vivid and original woman, whose life and ideas are shown to have been well before her time.

Feminist and Free Spirit

The Life and Times of Stella Browne

Gert Hekma

Franz Eder

Providing an overview of the key themes in the history of European sexual cultures, this text covers issues such as religion & sexuality, sexual education, sexual disease, same-sex relationships, pornography, failed fertility & abortion.

Sexual Cultures in Europe: Themes in sexuality

Sexual attitudes and behaviour have changed radically in Britain between the Victorian era and the twenty-first century. However, Lesley A. Hall reveals how slow and halting the processes of change have been, and how many continuities have persisted under a façade of modernity. Thoroughly revised, updated and expanded, the second edition of this established text: • explores a wide range of relevant topics including marriage, homosexuality, commercial sex, media representations, censorship, sexually transmitted diseases and sex education • features an entirely new last chapter which brings the narrative right up to the present day • provides fresh insights by bringing together further original research and recent scholarship in the area. Lively and authoritative, this is an essential volume for anyone studying the history of sexual culture in Britain during a period of rapid social change.

Lesley A. Hall

Books

Your next favorite book is out there