Guest Editors: Frank Mort and Lynda Nead
Since
1893 Sir Alfred Gilbert's statue of Eros has stood in the centre of Piccadilly
Circus in the heart of London's West End. Today, many of the capital's major routes
and sites of sociability radiate from Eros's plinth. Like all urban spaces, Piccadilly
Circus is a site for the convergence of multiple social relations. It is at once
a site of licit and illicit exchange.
Sexual Geographies explores the relationship between sexual regimes and identities and the spatial mapping of London at a number of key moments since the eighteenth century. The conceptual basis of this volume is the active role played by the geography of the metropolis in the representations and power relations of modern city life. The themes addressed range from: the clandestine marriage market of the early eighteenth century; the production of legal regulation of obscenity in the Victorian city; masculinity and commerce in East London; consumption and racial difference in the metropolis 1935-45; mapping sexual London in the Wolfenden committee of the 1950s; to the sexual topographies produced by the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales.
Contents and Contributors:
Frank
Mort and Lynda Nead Editorial
Miles Ogborn This Most Lawless Space:
The Geography of the Fleet and the Making of Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act of
1753
Lynda Nead From Alleys to Courts: Obscenity and the Mapping of
Mid-Victorian London
Christopher Breward Fashion and the Man: From
Suburb to City Street. The Spaces of Masculine Consumption 1870-1914
Mica
Nava Wider Horizons and Modern Desire: The Contradictions of America and Racial
Difference in London 1935-45
Frank Mort Mapping Sexual London: The
Wolfenden Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution 1954-57
Marcia
Pointon Funerary and Sexual Topographies: The Death and Commemoration of Diana,
Princess of Wales