Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man: Massachusetts and the History of Sexuality in America

With few exceptions, sex is noticeably absent from popular histories chronicling colonial and Revolutionary America. Using court records, newspapers, sermons, and private papers from Massachusetts, Thomas Foster vividly shows that sex-the behaviors, desires, and identities associated with eroticism-was a critical component of colonial understanding of the qualities considered befitting for a man. Starkly challenging current views about the development of sexuality in America, this book details e…