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Publications

Unless otherwise indicated, all Institute books are published and distributed by The University of North Carolina Press. For ordering information, call 1-800-848-6224 or fax 1-800-272-6817. Please note that these books can be only purchased through UNC Press and not through the Institute.

Clare A. Lyons

Cloth ISBN 0-8078-3004-6 $55.00
Paper ISBN 0-8078-5675-4 $22.50

Copyright 2006 by The University of North Carolina Press

An Award-Winning Book

  James Broussard Best First Book Prize, SHEAR (2007)

Visit the University of North Carolina Press web page for this book.

“Lyons has given us a book that has awaited its author for many decades--about sex and the city. The book … brims over with a brilliant fusion of social, cultural, and intellectual history, and builds a major thesis--the creation of ‘the modern American sexual system’—on an indefatigable exploration of almanacs, poor relief records, court cases, and a host of other sources. … More than ever, readers will see how governing sexual relations is one of the most potent weapons of those who would control the city.”

“Lyons’s provocative study illuminates a surprising post-Revolutionary world of sexual license in which the old rules have broken down and new individualist behaviors arisen in their place. But the heyday of the lusty woman … was to be short-lived, subdued by the reassertion of sexual order through a redefinition of normative female sexuality.”

“Historians have long believed that as the eighteenth century gave way to the nineteenth, the western world’s ideas about sex changed dramatically. As to sexual behavior, however, we have remained largely in the dark. Using the records of the early republic’s biggest city, Lyons charts the demise of a vibrant ‘culture of pleasure’—in practice as well as in theory. … Required reading for anyone who wants to understand the foundations of modern sexuality.”