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Sexual progressives: Reimagining intimacy in Scotland, 1880-1914 (Gender in History)
Purchase options and add-ons
- ISBN-101526160463
- ISBN-13978-1526160461
- PublisherManchester University Press
- Publication dateNovember 2, 2021
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions5.43 x 0.52 x 8.5 inches
- Print length248 pages
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Editorial Reviews
Review
'Her book is beautifully written, thoroughly researched, and elegantly argued. Cheadle brings to life a cast of Scottish progressives―Bella Pearce, Charles Pearce, Anna Geddes, Patrick Geddes, and Jane Hume Clapperton―and the networks and discourse they created.'
Mary Linehan, Journal of British Studies
'Sexual Progressives is beautifully constructed, offering a distinct and original Scottish dimension to a history of ideas and attitudes to progressive sex that has largely centered on Bohemian spaces in major cities.'
Kate Barclay, VICTORIAN STUDIES / VOLUME 64, NO. 1
From the Back Cover
Sexual Progressives is a major new study of the feminists and socialists who campaigned against the moral conservatism of the Victorian period. Drawing on a range of sources, from letters and diaries, to radical newspapers and utopian novels, it provides the first group portrait of Scotland’s sexual rebels. They include Bella and Charles Pearce, prominent Glasgow socialists and disciples of an American-based mystic who taught that religion needed ‘re-sexed’; Jane Hume Clapperton, a feminist freethinker with advanced views on birth-control and women’s right to sexual pleasure; and Patrick Geddes, founder of an avant-garde Edinburgh subculture and co-author of an influential scientific book on sex. A consideration of their lives and work forces a reappraisal of our understanding of sexual progressivism in Britain in a number of important ways. It affirms that a precondition of ‘speaking out’ about sex was the rejection of orthodox Christianity, with alternative forms of belief, such as a reworked Swedenborgianism, providing spaces in which a new morality could be fashioned. It disrupts the long-standing perception of the fin de siècle as an era of generational challenge, highlighting the importance of considering older radicalisms, such as freethought. Finally, it emphasises the regulatory role played by socialist and feminist organisations, reluctant to reinscribe past associations between political radicalism and immorality. This meant that despite their reforming zeal, Scotland’s sexual progressives often adhered to respectable norms, deferring their reimagined intimate relationships to an idealised future.
This book will be essential reading for all students and scholars of modern British social and cultural history, including those with an interest in sexuality and gender.
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Manchester University Press (November 2, 2021)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 248 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1526160463
- ISBN-13 : 978-1526160461
- Item Weight : 11.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.43 x 0.52 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #11,118,513 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,722 in Human Sexuality Studies
- #6,139 in Scotland History
- #20,450 in European History (Books)
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