Book excerpt: Sexual Outcasts presents a wide range of texts selected to illustrate the diversity of responses to the concealed body and to the secret or forbidden sexual practices of 1750-1850. Each volume follows the means by which prohibitions and taboos were produced and circulated. The reader can therefore explore the processes that disciplined the representation of the body and the constuction of sexual outcasts.This four-volume set presents a wide range of textual material: criminal reports; scientific and medical publications; newspaper items; sex manuals; guidebooks; speculative accounts, and case histories. The variety of sources permits a multiple perspective on the body, sexual drives, gendered psychologies and perverse behaviour across the century.