The Kinsey reports on sexual behaviour in the human male (1948) and female (1953) changed the nature of erotic writing and led eventually to the abolition of censorship. Kinsey's book on female sexuality caused acute consternation because "Nobody wanted to imagine the American housewife seeking out orgasms". This anthology is structured around desire, society, body, ritual and a final section on actually talking about sex. Described by the authors as a cultural anthology, it covers poetry, fiction, articles, reviews, personal ads, advice columns, sex manuals, film scripts and even a passage from the Bible. A conversation with Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs explores their earliest sexual desires, while Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues revolutionised female sexuality for thousands of theatregoers. Nothing is off limits, as "A story of a girl and her dog" illustrates, while Erica Jong's celebration of a sexual encounter from Fear of Flying has lost none of its erotic charge over the years. In the section on Body the writer "bell hooks" uses her own painful loss of virginity in the back seat of a car to examine the Tina Turner myth and other examples of the commodification of Black singers' sexuality. The section on Ritual starts with a mainstream article "Suggestions for Marital Success" and moves on to an explicit extract from Dr Alex Comfort's bestselling The New Joy of Sex, in which the man and then the woman is tied up to prolong the foreplay as long as possible. The darker side of sex is there too, and in Philip Appleman's poem "A Priest Forever" an abusive priest reveals himself as suffering abuse. 254pp, paperback.
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