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 17th-century erotic writing. Drawing on the high and low culture of the age, this collection includes courtly poems and works by Rochester, Sedley, and Etheridge, and broadside ballads, doggerel from almanacs, and songs from plays. The result is a lively social panorama of Restoration England and a cheerfully amoral celebration of the pleasures of the flesh.