Restoration Bawdy

Poems, Songs and Jests on the Subject of Sensual Love

Adlard John

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 Etheridge, 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.

About the Author

John Adlard has taught in universities in Eastern and Western Europe. He was the author of a study of folklore in William Blake and edited a selection of Blake's poems. His anthology of the work of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, is published in the Fyfield series as The Debt to Pleasure.

Back to the list of books