Restoration Bawdy: Poems, Songs and Jests on the Subject of Sensual Love

Sensual pleasure, gentle, violent or comic, is the theme of this anthology of seventeenth-century erotic writing. Restoration Bawdy brings vividly to life a 'masquerading age'. The book draws on high and low culture, and includes courtly poems and works by Rochester, Sedley and Etherege, as well as broadside ballads, doggerel from almanacs and songs from plays. A number of the pieces have only previously been available in research libraries. The result is a lively social panorama of Restoration England and a cheerfully amoral celebration of the pleasures of the flesh.