The production, circulation, and reception of sexual knowledges in published advice literature in Britain and Ireland, 1918-1987

Gill, Phoebe Letitia (2024). The production, circulation, and reception of sexual knowledges in published advice literature in Britain and Ireland, 1918-1987. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

Preview

Gill2024PhD.pdf
Text - Accepted Version
Available under License All rights reserved.
Download (3MB) | Preview

Abstract

This thesis investigates the markets, networks, mediating institutions and individuals behind the production, circulation, and reception of popular sexual knowledges in published advice literature in Britain, the Irish Free State, and the Republic of Ireland between 1918 and 1987. It uses archives of publishers, authors, libraries, and bookshops to trace these processes. I argue that taking these processes and those involved in them at all stages seriously opens up possibilities for understanding the polyvocal, uneven, and complicated story of the development of sexual culture. I show that advice literature occupied a ‘grey zone’ in sexual culture physically located in public spaces such as retail and library locations, raising questions about who had access to which knowledges, where, and what this could mean both culturally and for understandings of the self.

My methodology brings book and publishing histories into conversation with cultural histories of sex and sexuality. In doing so, it demonstrates the hitherto unrecognised significance of publishers, their relationships with ‘sex experts’, and the markets and institutions within, through, and between which advice books and related ephemera circulated for the production and movement of ideas about sex, bodies, and desires. Piecing together a patchwork of correspondence in publishing, institutional, and individual archives, this thesis ultimately complicates teleological narratives of ‘sexual revolution’ in the twentieth century by arguing that the process of knowledge production was layered and iterative. Through this, I place significance on the interwar period as a pivotal moment in the development of sexual culture, pushing back against narratives of encompassing, transformative change in the latter half of the century.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):