People have been writing about sex since they have been writing. Often they had to do this underground or in exile. Many books have misleading title pages, stating the book was published in Paris (where it was often legal) or simply saying “Private, for subscribers” which was also a away around the censorship laws. Sometimes books were masked as anthropological or scientific work. Often books were banned and publishers went to jail. Each work of erotica that survived is a part of a much neglected (and often shunned) history. Our collection spans the mere “bawdy” to the sexually explicit both in literature and in the artwork that accompanied that literature. We also have sexology studies into the “exotic” and “perverse” sexual practices around the world often presented in an intentionally salacious way.