Fiona Pitt-Kethley - The Literary Companion to Sex

I would like to acknowledge the help of all those who suggested works I should read, sent photographs or lent me books in particular, my friends Professor J. P. Sullivan for introducing me to Eskimo Nell and Maximianus Etruscus, Bernard Stone for ideas and the loan of various books, Jeremy Reed for ideas and photocopies, Gary Pulsifer for books and Anthony Suter for ideas. I would also like to thank Richard Greville Clark for the loan of the text of The Whore.

I would like to thank the staff of the London Library for staggering down with countless heavy volumes from The Librarians Room and similarly those of the British Library, most especially the woman who bravely mounted an unsuccessful search by computer for The Panegyrick upon Cundums trying to nudge its memory banks in vain with umpteen different spellings of condom.

I would also like to express my gratitude to the following publishers, agents and writers for permission to print extracts:

To Polygon Books and Liz Lochhead for poems from DreamingofFrankenstein and Collected Poems (Polygon 1984).

To Andr Deutsch Ltd; Alfred A. Knopf and John Updike for the extract from A Month of Sundays by John Updike. Copyright 1974, 1975 by John Updike. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

To Methuen, London, for the extracts from The Orton Diaries edited by John Lahr.

To Martin Seeker and Warburg Ltd and Rogers Coleridge and White Ltd for an extract from Erica Jongs Fear of Flying.

To Methuen and Michle Roberts for Magnificat from The Mirror of the Mother.

To Peter Owen for extracts from Guillaume Apollinaires Les Onze Mille Verges translated by Nina Rootes, from Anas Nins Little Birds and from Violette Leducs La Btarde translated by Derek Coltman.

To Grafton Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd and Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich for items from the Collected Poems of e. e. cummings.

To HarperCollins, Sheil Land Associates and Wendy Perriam for the extract from The Fifty Minute Hour.

To Jonathan Meades for Fur and Skin from his collection, FilthyEnglish, Jonathan Cape 1984, Paladin 1986.

To the Womens Press and Alfred A. Knopf for the excerpt from Original Sins by Lisa Alther. Copyright 1981 by Lisa Alther, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

To Dangaroo Press and David Dabydeen for use of his poem from Slave Song.

To Martin Seeker and Warburg Ltd for lines from Colettes LaVagabonde, translated by Enid Bagnold.

To Random Century Ltd for an excerpt from J. R. Ackerlys My DogTulip published by the Bodley Head.

To Random Century Ltd and Jonathan Clowes Ltd for Nothing to Fear from Collected Poems by Kingsley Amis published by Hutchinson.

To Random Century Ltd and Rogers Coleridge and White Ltd for an extract from Philip Roths Portnoys Complaint published by Jonathan Cape.

To Random Century Ltd and Peters Fraser and Dunlop Ltd for a poem from Nineties by Jeremy Reed.

To Carcanet Press Ltd for a poem from Sujata Bhatts Brunizem, published in 1988.

To David Higham Associates for the excerpt from Robert Baldicks translation of Restif de la Bretonnes Monsieur Nicholas.

To New Beacon Books Ltd and to James Barry for his poem from Fractured Circles.

To Curtis Brown and John Farquharson for the extract from Henry Millers Tropic of Cancer published by John Calder.

To the New Statesman and Roger Woddis for the use of his poem.

To Laurence Pollinger Ltd and the Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli for the extract from The First Lady Chatterley.

To Sebastian Barker, Zygmunt Frankel, Molly Parkin, Jeremy Reed, Charles Thomson and John Whitworth for the use of their poems and John Adlard and my mother O. Pitt-Kethley for the use of their verse translations.

Lastly, I would like to acknowledge the intransigence of the Nabokov Estate via Nikki Smith of Smith/Kolnik in repeatedly denying me permission to use a piece from Lolita even though an extract from that book had appeared in an erotic anthology and even though I explained to them what good company Nabokov would be keeping the Bible, Richardson, etc. The Nabokov Estate Nikki Smith wrote, has a firm policy of granting permission only for anthologies relating to the art of literature; requests for anthologies regarding sex per se are consistently denied. Whilst I can certainly appreciate the problems caused to an author by typecasting, this smacks of a whitewash job. Whether his estate likes it or not, Nabokov was a remarkably good writer about sex.

In spite of all possible efforts I have been unable to trace G. R. Quaife, translators Bernard Guilbert Guerney and Clement Egerton or the owners of the Alexandre Kuprin rights. I would be grateful if either they or their estates (as appropriate) would get in touch with me.

Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of the quoted material. If, however, there are inadvertent omissions, these can be rectified in any future editions.