The History of Sexuality in Europe; A Sourcebook and reader, ed. Anna Clark, (Routledge, Oxford and New York, 2011) xii, 358pp., paperback, £26.99, hardback, £80.00, ISBN 978 0 415 78140 4 paperback, 978 0 415 78139 8, hardback  

Anna Clark, Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, has edited this collection and provides an introduction entitled ‘The Magnetic poetry of Kit of Sex' which reviews the field and introduces the novel concept of a grammar of sex.  The rules of sexual grammar help determine what is intelligible.  For example, in Victorian Britain it was not intelligible that there should be intense sexual relations between women.

The reader focuses on the modern period and has three chapters on the ancient and medieval worlds showing their very different cultures of sexuality.  Each section of the Reader pairs recent studies by an expert with primary sources.  The questions addressed include such issues as why did Greek philosophers and Islamic poets in medieval times categorises men's desire for each other, were the Victorian's sexually repressed? Were 1960s feminists pro- or anti-sex?

A last chapter discusses whether prostitution should be legalised.  Yvonne Svanstraon agrees with the argument put forward in Sweden in the 1980s and 1990s that prostitution remained after sexual liberation the exploitation of women by men.  A useful index is provided for this interesting collection.