A History of the First Sexual Revolution

The Origins of Sex

Path-breaking ... touching ... This is a marvellously rich and thought-provoking book, written with clarity and humanity, and drawing on a huge range of materials, from sermons to pornography to social statistics

The Origins of Sex overturns the conventional wisdom that the sexual revolution began in the Sixties ... baby boomers will be shocked and, I suspect, a little upset

A revelation ... The book is not simply a finely crafted work of history, but a study that will reshape the way its readers understand the most intimate level of their lives.It may even bring some sanity to modern debates about sexuality

[A] sumptuously rich, learned and enlightening debut ... What makes Dabhoiwala's book so gloriously enjoyable is its happy blend of provocative ideas with splendidly rich historical anecdotes ... [a] lucidly written, densely researched and thoroughly persuasive book

An extraordinary kind of sex book [from] one of Oxford's brightest stars. His fat tome, The Orgins of Sex, took 20 years of historical research and is garnering the kind of "magisterial" reviews that cast Dabhoiwala in the role of the younger, cuter, Simon Schama

Faramerz Dabhoiwala's The Origins of Sex, an enthralling history of changing ideas about sexual freedom and desire from 1600 to 1800, interestingly blends progressivist and circular approaches. He shows us a Western world (mainly England) emerging from medieval sexual morality and enjoying 200 years of relative freedom, but he also shows it sliding back into repression and denial in the 19th century. The future remains a question mark... his book [is] inspiring as well as provocative

In The Origins of Sex, Faramerz Dabhoiwala does for the history of sexual attitudes what Lawrence Stone did for the history of sex and the family. Rigorously academic in his approach, Dabhoiwala focuses on intellectual and social currents to trace the grand sweep of sexual attitudes between 1600 and 1800. His aim "is not primarily to enter into the bedrooms and between the sheets of the past", but to examine sex as a public, rather than private, preoccupation. It needed a writer as erudite as Faramerz Dabhoiwala to knit together established theories of changes in the Enlightenment and weave in the primary sources to show how sex figures in the bigger picture. The book is packed with information and peppered with fascinating examples. It will delight students of social and sexual history, and anyone interested in the history of ideas

Faramerz Dabhoiwala was born in England, grew up in Amsterdam, and was educated at York and Oxford. He is the Senior Fellow in History at Exeter College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and the father of two children. This is his first book.

For most of western history, all sex outside marriage was illegal, with the church and state punishing any dissent. Between 1600 and 1800, this entire world-view was shattered by revolutionary new ideas - that consenting adults have the freedom to do what they like with their own bodies, and morality cannot be imposed by force.  This groundbreaking book shows that the creation of this modern culture of sex - broadcasted and debated in a rapidly expanding universe of public media - was a central part of the Enlightenment, and helped create a new model of western civilization whose principles of equality, privacy and individual freedom last to this day.

Fara Dabhoiwala

A brilliant history [of what] has long been a “weaponized mantra” in a public sphere dominated by the moneyed and the powerful, this fascinating book questions whether such a misunderstood ideal should be lauded as an end in itself ... Dabhoiwala wants us to think of free speech in terms of which voices are heard most loudly and which are marginalised ... meticulous and much-needed.

A rich and wide-ranging history which reminds us that disagreement over what may be printed or said in public has long been ferocious ... Dabhoiwala here corrects misconceptions, confirms how most arguments over speech are arguments at the same time about something else [and] reminds us that who defines it, who enjoys it and who regulates it is politics all the way down

There could be no better guide than Fara Dabhoiwala ... What Is Free Speech? makes you think afresh about the subject [and shows how] the history of free speech is its incurably accidental nature

Tracing a global history of speaking freely is no small task. Dabhoiwala tracks the vicissitudes of the idea with gusto, through religious prohibitions, monarchical edicts, colonial suppression of slave speech, and the perennial existence of misinformation ... an ambitious feat

Thought-provoking ... Fara Dabhoiwala trace[s] the history of freedom of expression as an intellectual concept and a political programme [and] set[s] out his views on its limitations and contradictions

The History of a Dangerous Idea

‘Free Speech!’ is a clarion call all over the world, yet what it means today is more contested than ever. Many cultures regard it as dangerous: in China, India, and across the Islamic world, unorthodox views about politics, sex, and religion are repressed and people are often punished for expressing them. Even in the western world, where it is held up as a core value, there is widespread discord and disagreement about what freedom of expression means. Amidst perennial imbalances of power, continually evolving cultural taboos, dramatic new technologies and a fast-changing global media landscape, where free speech comes from – and how we might think about it – are critical questions. 
 
Through the lens of history, What Is Free Speech? shows us that freedom of speech is not an absolute from which societies and regimes have drifted or dissented at different times, but something more complicated and interesting. 
 
Our modern conceptions of press and speech liberty, Dabhoiwala shows, were invented in Britain around 1700. The real history of freedom of expression is a story of countless fascinating men and women whose lives have shaped its principles and practices over the past 300 years – slaves and imperialists, poets and philosophers, plutocrats and revolutionaries. Ranging across Europe, North America and South Asia, and not neglecting other parts of the world, Dabhoiwala rejects celebratory platitudes about the past and present of free expression. Instead, his book explains how to think more deeply about free speech as a global as well as a local question — by tracing how we got into our current predicaments, showing that history complicates our contemporary presumptions, and suggesting fresh possibilities for the future.

Fara Dabhoiwala

Praise for What Is Free Speech?

A brilliant history [of what] has long been a “weaponized mantra” in a public sphere dominated by the moneyed and the powerful, this fascinating book questions whether such a misunderstood ideal should be la ...

A rich and wide-ranging history which reminds us that disagreement over what may be printed or said in public has long been ferocious ... Dabhoiwala here corrects misconceptions, confirms how most arguments o ...

There could be no better guide than Fara Dabhoiwala ... What Is Free Speech? makes you think afresh about the subject [and shows how] the history of free speech is its incurably accidental natur ...

A brilliant history [of what] has long been a “weaponized mantra” in a public sphere dominated by the moneyed and the powerful, this fascinating book questions whether such a misunderstood ideal should be la ...

A rich and wide-ranging history which reminds us that disagreement over what may be printed or said in public has long been ferocious ... Dabhoiwala here corrects misconceptions, confirms how most arguments o ...

There could be no better guide than Fara Dabhoiwala ... What Is Free Speech? makes you think afresh about the subject [and shows how] the history of free speech is its incurably accidental natur ...

A brilliant history [of what] has long been a “weaponized mantra” in a public sphere dominated by the moneyed and the powerful, this fascinating book questions whether such a misunderstood ideal should be la ...

A rich and wide-ranging history which reminds us that disagreement over what may be printed or said in public has long been ferocious ... Dabhoiwala here corrects misconceptions, confirms how most arguments o ...

There could be no better guide than Fara Dabhoiwala ... What Is Free Speech? makes you think afresh about the subject [and shows how] the history of free speech is its incurably accidental natur ...

Books by Fara Dabhoiwala

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter