The British Seafarer

Craig, Robin

GREENHILL, Basil

Mason, Michael

Arrow (A Division of Random House Group)

We tend to think of the Victorians as the personification of prudery and puritanism, a people whose sexual attitudes, practices, and knowledge differed greatly from our own, to their detriment. Indeed, even in the midst of the A.I.D.S. crisis and our growing concern about safe sex, the Victorians hardly seem an appealing role model of sexual behavior. But is this image really very accurate? What did the Victorians really think about sex? What were their sex lives like? And what wider concepts-biological, political, religious-shaped their sexuality? The Making of Victorian Sexuality directly confronts one of the most persistent cliches of modern times. Drawing on a wealth of sources from medical and scientific texts, to popular fiction, evangelical writing, and the work of radicals such as Godwin and Mill, Michael Mason shows how much of our perception of nineteenth-century sexual culture is simply wrong. Covering such topics as premarital sex, marriage, prostitution, women's sexuality, and male masturbation, Mason shows that, far from being a license for prudery and hypocrisy, Victorian sexuality was guided by a humane and progressive vision of society's future. Mason reveals that the average Victorian man was not necessarily the church-going, tyrannical, secretly lecherous, bourgeois pater familias of modern-day legend, but often an agnostic, radical-minded, sexually continent citizen, with a deliberately restricted number of children. He paints a society in which husbands and wives knew full well about female orgasm and women's sexuality; where if some specialists believed that nervous disorders in women, ranging from epilepsy to schizophrenia, were due to masturbation, most experts emphatically denied the connection; and where the extensive use of birth control devices first began (pioneered oddly enough by the bottom of the middle class: shop-owners, hotel-keepers, and other nonmanual but nonprofessional and nonm

The Making of Victorian Sexuality

History

Europe

Oxford University Press

How were Victorian sexual attitudes formed? Michael Mason's lively and provocative study takes into account the relative contributions of evangelical religion and radical-secular ideals to the period's dominant sexual culture, and argues that to be `Victorian' about sex was in fact to be progressive, optimistic, emancipated--and hence modern. The prequel to this book, The Making of Victorian Sexuality, presented a detailed analysis of Victorian sexual behaviour. In this sequel, Michael Mason analyses the ideological context of the sexual moralism of nineteenth-century England.

The Making of Victorian Sexual Attitudes

We tend to think of the Victorians as the personification of prudery and puritanism, a people whose sexual attitudes, practices, and knowledge differed greatly from our own, to their detriment. Indeed, even in the midst of the AIDS crisis and our growing concern about safe sex, the Victorians hardly seem an appealing role model of sexual behavior. But is this image really very accurate? What did the Victorians really think about sex? What were their sex lives like? And what wider concepts--biological, political, religious--shaped their sexuality? The Making of Victorian Sexuality directly confronts one of the most persistent cliches of modern times. Drawing on a wealth of sources from medical and scientific texts, to popular fiction, evangelical writing, and the work of radicals such as Godwin and Mill, Michael Mason shows how much of our perception of nineteenth-century sexual culture is simply wrong. Covering such topics as premarital sex, marriage, prostitution, women's sexuality, and male masturbation, Mason shows that, far from being a license for prudery and hypocrisy, Victorian sexuality was guided by a humane and progressive vision of society's future. Mason reveals that the average Victorian man was not necessarily the church-going, tyrannical, secretly lecherous, bourgeois pater familias of modern-day legend, but often an agnostic, radical-minded, sexually continent citizen, with a deliberately restricted number of children. He paints a society in which husbands and wives knew full well about female orgasm and women's sexuality; where if some specialists believed that nervous disorders in women, ranging from epilepsy to schizophrenia, were due to masturbation, most experts emphatically denied the connection; and where the extensive use of birth control devices first began (pioneered oddly enough by the bottom of the middle class: shop-owners, hotel-keepers, and other nonmanual but nonprofessional and nonmanagerial workers). Furthermore, he points out that Victorians were the first to concern themselves about sex education for children, the quality of urban nightlife, commuter marriages, the competing claims of pleasure and procreation in married sex, and the rationale of divorce. Persuasively arguing that there is much in Victorian sexual moralism of interest to the late twentieth century, this lively and fascinating study offers a radical challenge to one of the most enduring myths of our age.

Self-Help

Victorian sexual moralism was real enough, but what was its nature? The Victorians are often called 'puritanical', with the implication that their sexual moralism was religiously based. It was opposed, we like to think, by freethinkers and progressives, and perhaps also by the working class. Michael Mason has already pointed to the fallacy of such views in his previous volume, The Making of Victorian Sexuality. Here he develops his revisionist account of Victorian sexual ideology and shows that to be 'Victorian' about sex was actually, in its day, to be progressive, optimistic, and modern-minded. Religious beliefs, even in militant form, were only a support for an essentially secular ideal. The Victorian anti-sensual coalition did break down at the end of the century, but the liberationists were old-fashioned reformers, who were often bitterly resisted by, for example, socialists and feminists. This novel and provocative analysis is developed in a series of detailed portraits of crucial movements, episodes, and individuals: the Swedenborgians, Henry James Prince, 'Baron' Renton Nicholson, the 'Vice Society', prostitute rescue, Owenism, neo-Malthusianism, and many more. A formidable array of evidence is assembled for views which strike at the root of conventional wisdom about the English nineteenth century.

Civic self-determination and ecological sustainability are widely accepted as two of the most important public goals. This book explains how they can be combined. Using vivid and telling case studies from around the world, it shows how liberal rights can include both ecological and social conditions for collective decision-making and how environmentalist goals and social justice can be achieved together.

Environmental Democracy

Science & Math

Nature & Ecology

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

Author Michael Mason has experienced the dangerous encounters of street life that are viewed as part of the game. Where every man is for himself -- friend against friend for money and fame. This was the era when crime and violence were highlighted as a model for successful living. A period when no one dared to speak the truth about the destruction of the streets, gangs, drugs, and the harsh reality of prison life.
After serving over 20 years in prison for a non-violent offense, he decided not to sit back idly and selfishly while young men foolishly and ignorantly mimicked his steps and made poor decisions that would, in the long run, destroy their futures.
No one warned him about the path he chose and the detrimental effects that accompanied his decisions, so out of selflessness and a sincere concern for these young men, sons, brothers, future husbands, and fathers, Mr. Mason took it upon himself to expose the ugliness of "Street Life."
He wants teens and adolescents to know the truth about a life that is dressed in the fine apparel of riches and fame, but inwardly means a life of death, grief, embarrassment, imprisonment, and hopelessness. This book was written in hopes of saving at least one life, if not many more.

From Street Block to Cell Block: The Choice is Yours

Teen & Young Adult

Social Issues

Mia Bella Glam Salon

First edition bound in green cloth. A fine copy in a fine dust jacket. Mild toning to the page margins.

ESCAPE: AN ANTHOLOGY

RANDOM HOUSE UK

A contemporary history of the Third World that explains why most of these countries failed to develop in ways which benefit the majority of their populations.

Development and Disorder: A History of the Third World Since 1945

World

Univ Pr of New England

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mason, Michael. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Mason, Michael

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mason, Michael. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The British Seafarer

The Making of Victorian Sexuality

The Making of Victorian Sexual Attitudes

The Making of Victorian Sexuality

The Making of Victorian Sexual Attitudes

Environmental Democracy

The British Seafarer

From Street Block to Cell Block: The Choice is Yours

ESCAPE: AN ANTHOLOGY

Development and Disorder: A History of the Third World Since 1945