Sex and Sexuality in Tudor England

by Carol McGrath

First published 2022

Amazon

3.7(365)

Sex and Sexuality in Tudor England is a work of social history examining how people in Tudor England understood desire, marriage, the body and sexual behaviour. Carol McGrath moves between court and common life to consider betrothal and bedding customs, church teaching, adultery, prostitution, contraception, childbirth, venereal disease, same-sex relationships and the language used to describe sex.

The book also places sexuality within the wider material culture of the period, including clothing, medicine, festivals, poetry, brothels and popular belief. Figures such as Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard appear within a broader investigation of how rules were taught, enforced, negotiated and ignored. Rather than treating Tudor sex as court gossip alone, McGrath uses it as a route into social expectations, gender and everyday life across the Tudor period.