Unfit for Modest Ears

This is a book about dirty books. It deals with some fifty works published during the period of the Interregnum and the Restoration. Between about 1650 and 1690 there were added to the traditional strain of English bawdy two further types of immodest writing: the often outrageous verse connected with the court circle, and pornography, usually of foreign origin, but for the first time published in English. Although I have attempted to analyse the causes of these developments, I have devoted most of this book to the task of describing the works themselves, partly because most of them are virtually unknown, and partly because they are now often extremely rare. Indeed ten of the most important items survive in unique copies in libraries and private collections in Britain and America. In my analyses of these 'ugly ducklings' of English literature, I have tried to convey a sense of tone and style through frequent quotation, without being unnecessarily offensive.