Overview

SEX IN HISTORY chronicles the pleasures- and perils- of the flesh from the time of mankind's distant ancestors to the modern day; from a sexual act which was bried, crude and purposeful, to the myriad varieties of contemporary sexual mores. Reay Tannahill's scholarly, yet accessible study ranges from the earliest form of contraception (one Egyptian concoction included crocodile dung) to some latter- day misconceptions about it- like the men who joined their lovers in taking the pill 'just to be on the safe side.' It surveys all manner of sexual practice, preference and position (the acrobatic 'wheelbarrow' position, the strenuous 'hovering butterflies' position...) and draws on souces as diverse as THE ADMIRABLE DISCOURSES OF THE PLAIN GIRL, the EXHIBTION OF FEMALE FLAGELLANTS, IMPORTANT MATTERS OF THE JADE CHAMBER and THE ROMANCE OF CHASTISEMENT. Whether writing on androgyny, courtly love, flagellation or zoophilia, Turkish eunuch's Greek dildoes, Taoist sex manuals or Japanses geisha girls, Reay Tannahill is consistently enlightening and entertaining.

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Reviews

Level-headed...diligent, provocative and fascinating. The book is the most complete of its kind ever written. TIME Sanity on the subject of sex is all too rare; wit is in even shorter supply; and an engaging style is about as commonplace as eyebrows on an egg. Three cheers therefore, for Reay Tannahill. WASHINGTON POST A shatteringly wide-ranging survey. SUNDAY TIMES

'Level-headed...diligent, provocative and fascinating. The book is the most complete of its kind ever written.' TIME 'Sanity on the subject of sex is all too rare; wit is in even shorter supply; and an engaging style is about as commonplace as eyebrows on an egg. Three cheers therefore, for Reay Tannahill.' WASHINGTON POST 'A shatteringly wide-ranging survey.' SUNDAY TIMES

Level-headed...diligent, provocative and fascinating. The book is the most complete of its kind ever written. - TIME Sanity on the subject of sex is all too rare; wit is in even shorter supply; and an engaging style is about as commonplace as eyebrows on an egg. Three cheers therefore, for Reay Tannahill. - WASHINGTON POST A shatteringly wide-ranging survey. - SUNDAY TIMES

After first Food in History and then Flesh and Blood: A History of the Cannibal, why not? Tannahill doesn't pretend to theory or depth, offering instead the inclusion of Taoist sex manuals, Turkish eunuchs, ancient Greek dildoes, and Panamanian sodomites as adequate recompense for the omission of a certain amount of local or legal detail. Well, it isn't. The text abounds in overstatements and unsupported assertions. Thus, while Tannahill sees an intellectual divergence (?) between the sexes during the neolithic revolution - with man becoming convinced of his superiority - in ancient Greece the hetairai, the educated courtesans, were still able to chalk up a feminine triumph over the pederasts. But, as monotheism wins out and the Christian church takes over from Rome, it's just not fun anymore. Sex becomes a sin, homosexuality a threat to the state, marriage itself a difficult question with many church fathers sharing the sentiments of St. Jerome: I should like. . . every man to take a wife who cannot manage to sleep alone because he gets frightened at night. Yet, by the twelfth century, Tannahill blithely sees signs for hope in the emergence of courtly love, and later delights in the 17th-century discovery that semen really does not contain ready-made babies after all: Woman became not an incubator, but a mother. Further changes are noted down to the present day, all treated in an equally cursory manner (modern birth control gets 2O pages, modern feminism 1O). Summing up, Tannahill writes that man, now made responsible for his partner's satisfaction, began to lose his nerve. Women themselves, however, fared little better: Some withdrew into lesbianism, others into work, and the majority into blockbuster novels where masterful passionate heroes could be relied on to bring a woman unerringly to ecstasy. Too much and too little, and lots of it slapdash. (Kirkus Reviews)

Tannahill's history of sex shows that in sex, as in other aspects of human behaviour, there is no such thing as a new idea. What this book is really about is the peculiarity of the human mind rather than (or maybe as well as) the body, and one of its fascinations is the kaleidoscope of human foolishness where sex is concerned. Shown here are individuals behaving with great cruelty to each other simply because their sexual tastes differ; here too is the cruelty of nature, from the great plagues of venereal disease to the modern plague of AIDS. Tannahill tells her serious story with wit and good humour and the book, while serious, is never pedantic. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

After a varied career, Reay Tannahill was asked to write a short illustrated history of Regency England. Then she wrote several books - both non-fiction and fiction. PASSING GLORY won the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year award. She died in December 2007.

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