Article2007

The rites of man: The British Museum and the sexual imagination in Victorian Britain

4 citations0/0 files storedJournal of the History of Collections

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Libraries and Information Services Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes Decadence, Literature, and Society

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, the British Museum possessed a locked store of erotic objects. However, this did not serve to sanitize the rest of the collection. I use the evidence of an anonymous tract, Idolomania, set in the context of other literary productions of the time, to show how a wave of anti-Catholic agitation led to claims that the public displays of the British Museum were saturated with morally dangerous material. A wide range of objects, images and motifs were interpreted as evidence of pagan fertility cults, thus throwing into question the seemliness of the Museum's public displays.

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References

1988Radical underworld: prophets, revolutionaries, and pornographers in London, 1795-1840 1979Much Maligned Monsters, History of European Reactions to Indian Art 2004The Enlightenment and religion: the myths of modernity 2000A geography of Victorian gothic fiction: mapping history's nightmares 2002Governing pleasures: pornography and social change in England, 1815-1914 2002Sexuality, Obscenity, Community ; Women Muslims and the Hindu Public in Colonial India 1999A History of the British Museum Library 2003The British Museum: a history

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2018Sex in the Secret Museum: Photographs from the British Museum’s Witt Scrapbooks

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