Sex among the rabble : an intimate history of gender & power in the age of revolution, Philadelphia, 1730-1830 / Clare A. Lyons.

Chapel Hill : Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, [2006], ©2006.

420 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Includes bibliographical references (p. [405]-406) and index.

The sexual terrain of colonial and revolutionary Philadelphia -- A springboard to revolution : runaway wives and self-divorce -- The fruits of nonmarital unions : sex in the urban pleasure culture -- The pleasures and powers of reading : eroticization of popular print and discursive interpretations of sex -- Sex in the city in the age of democratic revolutions -- To be "free and independent" : sex among the revolutionary rabble -- Sex and the politics of gender in the age of revolution -- Normalizing sex in the nineteenth century : the assault on nonmarital sexuality -- Through our bodies : prostitution and the cultural reconstruction of nonmarital sexuality -- Through our souls : the benevolent reform of sexual transgressors -- Through our children : bastardy comes under attack.