Sexual Inversion

Sexual Inversion was the first English medical textbook about homosexuality. It had a chequered publishing history, going through five editions between 1896 and 1915. This edition, with a long critical introduction, places the book in its intellectual and social contexts, and considers the historiography surrounding this important work.

'It is extremely important that such books are reprinted because they offer a fresh perspective on an essential moment in gay and sexological history, on the making of the homosexual and out of the ashes of sodomites, pederasts and tribades. Many scholars discuss such books and often condemn them without even having read them or understood them within the context of their time. Crozier offers us the opportunity to get intimately acquainted with a book that represented a momentous beginning for serious debates on same-sex pleasures in the English-speaking world.' - Gert Hekma, History of Psychiatry

'Ivan Crozier has done a great service in returning to historians the first English edition in all its richness. No doubt there will be an appreciative audience who will welcome Crozier's ability to combine fine history of medicine with history of sexuality...Crozier's meticulous annotation and complete references, in particular to German, French and Italian literature of the period that is missing from the original publication, enables historians to identify easily the primary sources on which Sexual Inversion was based. At the same time, these detailed annotations reveal Crozier's deep knowledge of nineteenth-century medical literature about sexual perversions, and this work will be appreciated by all historians with an eye for detail.' - Chiara Beccalossi, Social History of Medicine

'Crozier is to be congratulated for bringing to our attention an importantcontribution to the debate on human sexuality.' Metascience

Auteur
IVAN CROZIER is a lecturer in the Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh. He has published widely on the history of sexology in academic journals, and is currently completing a study of an important criminal responsibility trial from London in 1922.

Contenu
Introduction: Havelock Ellis, John Addington Symonds and the Construction of Sexual Inversion ; I.Crozier Ellis and Symonds' Sexual Inversion chapters Ellis and Symonds Sexual Inversion Appendices Complete Bibliography