o' - Hardcover

A skilfully constructed history of the peak of female sexual pleasure from ancient Greece, where women purchased long leather probes called olisbos (self-satisfiers), to medieval and later times when the very idea of enjoying sex was regarded with horror - although, surprisingly enough, dildos were freely available during the Edwardian era. The secrets of the orgasm existed in other places and at other times but the modern European sexual age began when the clitoris was discovered in 1558 by anatomist Mateo Columbus, who was promptly imprisoned for his pains. Margolis tells us that over a typical lifetime we can expect to enjoy only about 10 hours of orgasm and in the animal kingdom only female apes, dolphins and elephants find sex enjoyable (although one can only speculate how research into these assertions was carried out).

In 1558 an anatomist called Columbus discovered the clitoris, and so a whole new world of sexual pleasure began to be opened up - and it was a steady progress that culminated in the present Golden Age. That at least is the official history. Here Jonathan Margolis produces evidence to show that in Europe and America progress was extremely slow whilst in other places the secrets of the orgasm created almost unimaginable worlds of pleasure. The book will draw on orgasm's biology, anthropology, psychology, technology and sociology. Revered in ancient societies, by the 13th Century modesty ruled: St Francis of Assisi would throw himself into a thorn bush to disguise unwanted erections and avoid all possibility of orgasm. Victorians still regarded the female orgasm as a form of hysteria - Women were treated for hysteria and, by the 19th century, were strongly advised against riding bicycles for this reason. In Edwardian Britain and America, vibrators were routinely advertised in the respectable women's magazines as a form of handy household appliance. Margolis considers the revival of open, public interest in sex in the late 1950s, and the effect of the Pill, feminism and Viagra on the state of the orgasm in the 21st century.