Abstract
ABSTRACT John Roberton’s Kalogynomia (1821) and Alexander Walker’s Beauty (1836) claimed to be scientific works teaching readers to appreciate female beauty. The books present explicit sexual content in technical anatomical prose. We situate these books in the context of late-Georgian radical publishing. We argue that they occupy an interesting intersection between the scientific and the erotic. By treating women’s beauty as a question for science, the books promised to teach readers sexual connoisseurship, which offered erotic pleasures. The scientific status they claimed for their books enabled them to depict nudity and sex while maintaining their respectability as men with medical training. The pseudo-scientific study of female beauty offered possibilities for publishing erotic material in late-Georgian London, producing an unusual genre which became all but extinct in the twentieth century.
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