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in 1616, and William Gouge (Of Domestical Duties, 1622) strongly promoted the right of married couples to enjoy ‘mutual dalliances for pleasure’s sake’. They also urged that ‘husband and wife mutually delight each in the other,’ maintain a ‘fervent love’ and exchange ‘due benevolence one to another which is warranted and sanctified by God’s word’.

      Francis Rous, the provost of Eton College in Buckinghamshire, published a sermon in 1656 that sounds like the preamble to some medieval handbook of voyeurism. The Mystical Marriage was inspired by the prophet Isaiah’s words, ‘Fear not, for thy maker is thine husband’. Rous exhorted readers, ‘Desire this husband ... Clear up thine eye and fix it on him as upon the fairest of men, the perfection of spiritual beautie ... accordingly fasten on him, not thine eye only, but thy mightiest love and hottest affection. Look on him so, that thou maist lust after him; for here it is a sin not to look as thou maist lust, and not to lust, having looked.’

      It was powerful preaching, particularly from a Church that had not long before preached chastity as the only pure way. In the years approaching 1700, the general English market for sex advice was also getting stronger. We cannot know for certain what books were published or how many were bought, because the vast majority were printed as throw-away items, to be sold and read furtively. Samuel Pepys betrays himself in his diary as one of this growing band of secret sex-book stashers: ‘Away to the Strand to my booksellers and bought that idle, roguish book, L’Eschole des filles, which I have bought in plain binding (avoiding the buying of it better bound) because I resolve, as soon as I have read it, to burn it, that it may not stand in the list of books, nor among them, to disgrace them if it should be found.’

      But one book did more than survive: it became so popular that it was still in bookshops early in the twentieth century. It was called Aristotle’s Masterpiece. The 4 BC Greek philosopher’s History of Animals, Parts of Animals, and Generation of Animals had provided the foundation both of Western zoology and Western sexology, and his influence was so great that almost anything attributed to him was believed. When the Masterpiece first came out, some enterprising publisher stuck Aristotle’s name in the title, although only fragments of the information and misinformation it conveys can be traced to him. The first known edition is dated 1684 and was aimed at the common reader, the sort of literate lower-class person who bought ballads and almanacs. The text was primarily a collection of sexual folk wisdom, with hints on the positions to assume if you wanted to have a boy or a girl, and some rather bizarre pregnancy tests. The quality of the science is evident from this ‘any other questions’ exchange at the end of the book: ‘Question: Why don’t birds urinate? Answer: Because that superfluity which would be converted into urine, is turned into feathers.’ Nevertheless, the Masterpiece went through at least 43 editions by 1800 and there were most likely many more, which ended up being hidden, burnt, torn up and otherwise lost by the likes of Pepys.

      In France, Nicholas Venette (a pseudonym) became a contemporary rival to the Masterpiece. His Tableau de l’amour conjugal was published in France in 1696, not long after the Masterpiece. Its theme was similar but it felt more sophisticated and, initially, more salacious. It was translated in Britain in 1703 as The Mysteries of Conjugal Love Reveald, priced at six shillings, and soon became Europe’s most popular sex guide – published in more than 100 editions and going well into the 20th century. Venette was a doctor and a father of 12. He was therefore doubly qualified to declare that the Masterpiece’s pregnancy tests – such as drinking honey and water at bedtime (a beating sense around the navel allegedly meant you’d conceived) – did not work.

      Venette’s opening literary gambit was one that became practically obligatory right up until the 1960s – getting your retaliation in first with a justification, excuse or apology about daring to write on such a touchy subject. He declared, ‘If on the one hand, sin hath tacked shame to this knowledge; on the other, nature hath placed nothing there but what is delightful and pretty.’ So please don’t burn, jail, fine or sue me. Odd ideas? Try, ‘From the right testicle cometh the male, and from the left, the female.’ So if you tied the left one off, or lay on your right side while having sex, your chances of having a boy would increase. The book would have got him included on a News of the World hate-list for suggesting that women are sexually ‘fit for commerce’ when they reach their 13th birthday.

      Venette had a few other strange notions, and in particular one that stemmed from a Galen-inspired belief, which was still popular in the 1700s, that masturbation was a decent way to get rid of excess sperm. Venette suggested that men are superior to woman because, by masturbating, they can renew their seed instead of allowing it to rot in their systems: ‘She sometimes retains it lengthily in her testicles or in the horns of her uterus, where it becomes tainted and turns yellow, murky, or foul smelling, instead of white and clear as it was formerly. Unlike man, who, by polluting himself frequently, even during his sleep, benefits from a seed that is always renewed and never remains in his canals long enough to become corrupt.’

      Women Who Make Good Lovers

      It’s all in the face

      Yu Fang Mi Chueh (Secret Codes of the Jade Room), c. AD 50

      A woman with a small mouth and short fingers has a shallow porte feminine and she is easy to please. You can be sure that a woman must have big and thick labia if she has a big mouth and thick lips. If she has deep-set eyes, her porte feminine is bound to be deep too. If a woman has a pair of big, sparkling eyes, her porte feminine is narrow at its entrance, and yet roomy in the inner part. A woman with two dimples is tight and narrow down below.

      Short (but normal) is best

      Theodoor Hendrik Van de Velde, Ideal Marriage, Its Physiology and Technique (1928)

      Women of short stature and small bones can often meet all requirements in the flexibility and capacity of their vaginae. And their sexual vigour and efficiency are also conspicuous, not only in coitus but in their buoyant reaction to the mental and physical stress and strain of menstruation, pregnancy and parturition, their fine flow of milk and easy and frequent conception (note the saying among the English common people: ‘Little women – big breeders’).

      In short, little women approximate most often to the typical womanly ideal. But of course this is only the case when this small stature is perfectly proportionate throughout and when the sexual development is adequate. When the small stature is due to some form of abnormality it is more than likely that the genitals will show serious defects structurally and functionally, in some way or other.

      Sweaty’s sexy

      Fang Nei Chi (Records of the Bedchamber), Sui Dynasty (AD 590–618)

      Suitable women are naturally tender and docile and of gentle mien. Their hairs are of a silky black, their skin is soft and their bones fine. They are neither too tall nor too short, neither too fat nor too thin. The lips of the vulva should be thick and large. Their groins should not be covered with hair and the vagina should be moist. Their age should be between 25 and 30 and they should not yet have borne a child.

      During coition their vaginas should emit abundant liquid. Their bodies should move so that they cannot restrain themselves. Drenched in sweat, they succumb to the motions of their man. Women endowed with these qualities will never harm a man, even if he himself is ignorant of the correct way of sexual intercourse.

      Small-breasted, shrill hairy heaven

      Nicholas Venette, The Mysteries of Conjugal Love Reveald (1703)

      Woman, hot in constitution and vehemently desirous of commerce with man, is easily distinguished by those versed in the nature of sex. In order to inform the ignorant, the breasts of such a woman are generally very small, but at the same time conveniently plump and hard. There is a profusion of hair about her privities occasioned by the extraordinary heat in those parts. The hair of the head is short and inclinable to curl, her voice is shrill and loud; she is cold of speech, cruel and oppressive to those of her own sex and unsteady in her devotion.

      She is very complaisant and obliging in her behaviour towards men, but especially to those of her friends and acquaintance; she is of florid

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