Sarah Toulalan is a Wellcome Lecturer in Medical History, University of Exeter.

This project began as an MA dissertation at Royal Holloway, and I am very grateful to Laura Gowing and Lyndal Roper for their support and encouragement in developing it first into a Ph.D thesis, and thereafter into this book. I am indebted to my supervisor, Lyndal Roper, not only for the superb quality of her supervision but also for her unstinting support and encouragement during the turbulent times that accompanied the development and writing of the initial thesis, and for her excellent advice subsequently on how to turn it into a better book. I am also immensely grateful to Penelope Corfield, whose words of sympathy and support at a critical point ensured that I did not give up. Thanks are due also to Sandra Cavallo and Caroline Barron for their comments and advice. I wish to express my gratitude also to all those whose personal support, extensive hospitality, interest, encouragement, and stimulating discussion kept me going, especially Sarah Barry, Frances Bradshaw, Bryan Cress, Amanda Goodrich, Karen Harvey, Stephanie Hovland, James Nixon, Eve Setch, Harriet Turner, and Val Webb. Postgraduate funding from the Royal Holloway Department of History and from the British Academy supported my doctoral work, for which I am extremely grateful. I am especially grateful to Jonathan Barry, Mike Duffy, and Alex Walsham at the University of Exeter Department of History for providing intellectual and other support during the final year of my doctorate, which considerably smoothed my progress towards completion. The process of reworking and expanding my Ph.D. thesis into this book was aided by the critical insight and advice of my two examiners, Ann Hughes and Anthony Fletcher. I am particularly grateful to Ann Hughes for reading again parts of the revised and enlarged manuscript and for her very helpful comments and suggestions. I am also indebted to the anonymous OUP readers for their invaluable suggestions, which have helped make this a much better book. Thanks also again to Alex Walsham for her critical reading of the entire manuscript, and constant encouragement to bring it to completion. I have also benefited enormously from feedback in seminars at the Universities of Bath Spa, Bristol, Exeter, Glamorgan, Hull, Oxford, and the West of England, as well as at conferences hosted by the Social History Society and the Women’s History Network. The book was written and rewritten while I held various posts at the University of Exeter, and the unstinting support and good humour of my colleagues during the many revisions of the manuscript also helped to ensure that they eventually reached completion. Finally, I am enormously grateful to my sister, Karen Toulalan, for her unswerving belief that I would finish the book,and to Robin for his patience while I did it. This book is for Karen and Robin in thanks for their love and endless patience.Chapter 2 uses material from my article ‘ ‘‘The Act of Copulation beingb Ordain’d by nature as the ground of all Generation’’: Fertility and the Repre-sentation, of Sexual Pleasure in Seventeenth Century Pornography in England’,Women’s History Review, 15/4 (Sept. 2006), 521–32, and is reprinted courtesy of Taylor & Francis. An earlier version of Chapter 4 was published as ‘Extraor-dinary Satisfactions: Lesbian Visibility in Seventeenth-Century Pornography in England’, Gender & History, 15/1 (Apr. 2003), 50–68, and is reproduced cour-tesy of Blackwell Publishing Ltd.; and parts of Chapter 5 appears as ‘ ‘‘PrivateRooms and Back Doors in Abundance’’: The Illusion of Privacy in Pornographyin Seventeenth-Century England’, Women’s History Review, 10/4 (Dec. 2001),701–19, courtesy of Taylor & Francis.