Transactional sex has been defined, experienced, and understood in many different ways across cultures and time, but it has always been concerned with more than pleasure. Prostitution has always been central to polarities at the heart of any culture: licit/illicit, work/luxury, sacred/profane, family/nonfamily, health/sickness, art/obscenity, straight/queer, masculine/feminine, colony/metropole, and literature/pornography. A Cultural History of Prostitution presents the first comprehensive history of the subject. The work is divided into 6 volumes, with each volume covering the same topics, so readers can either study a period/volume or follow a topic across history.

The 6 volumes cover: Antiquity (c.700 BCE-500 CE); the Medieval Age (500-1450); the Renaissance (1450-1650); the Age of Reason (1650-1800); the Age of Empire (1800-1920); the Modern Age (1920 - present).


Themes (and chapter titles) are: the state; identity; the market; religion, and morality; medicine, health, and the body; the visual and performing arts; literature

The page extent for the pack is approximately 1536pp. Each volume opens with an Introduction and concludes with Notes, Bibliography, and an Index.

The Cultural Histories Series
A Cultural History of Prostitution is part of The Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available both as printed hardcover sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a one-off purchase and tangible reference for their shelves, or as part of a fully-searchable digital library available to institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access (see www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com).