Poetry bestseller boasts saucy secret in the bookbinding … 18th century porn

The Works of the Earls of Rochester and Roscommon ran to more than 20 editions. Voyeuristic verse may explain why

Charlotte Higgins, chief arts writer
The Guardian, Friday 4 February 2011
Article history
The Discovery is one of three poems, bound in to the 1714 edition of the Works of the Earls of Rochester and Roscommon, devoted to the dildo. Photograph: Handout
Poetry is getting so popular these days – see Jo Shapcott's victory in the Costa book of the year award – that perhaps it doesn't need smart marketing ideas to scale the bestseller lists. Even so, modern poetry publishers might consider using an 18th-century ruse to attract sales: slipping in a few pornographic verses to pique readers' interest.
Dr Claudine van Hensbergen, a researcher at Oxford University, thinks she may have stumbled on the reason for the success of an apparently serious volume called The Works of the Earls of Rochester and Roscommon, which ran to more than 20 editions and was reprinted throughout the 18th century.
Bound in at the back of the 1714 edition, van Hensbergen found, was a section called the Cabinet of Love. It contained three poems, "the organising principle of which," van Hensbergen says, "appears to be the dildo".
The first poem, The Discovery, is narrated by a man who lies concealed in a lady's bedroom. As he admires her "little, pretty, panting Bubbies" he is surprised to see her pull from her pocket a "Tool,/ Much like to that with which Men Women rule". The poem continues: "She it apply'd where I'm asham'd to tell,/ And acted what I could have done as well."
As he watches the unfolding scene, the narrator, according to Van Hensbergen, suffers what might be called "dildo envy".
Van Hensbergen thinks the slipped-in pornographic poems could have become a "shared secret" among readers, a cleverly concealed sliver of smut at the end of a serious two-volume work.
The second poem – attributed, probably falsely, to Samuel Butler – describes a bonfire of dildos, rendered necessary (according to the satirical logic of the poem) by an act of parliament banning the import of French goods.
In a later edition, a printer also included a poem called A Panegyrick Upon Cundums – a hymn to the wondrous qualities of prophylactics, praising not only their contraceptive powers ("Unknown big Belly, and squawling Brat") but also their usefulness in the quest for what we would now call safer sex.
As the verse goes: "Happy the Man, who in his Pocket keeps/ [...] A well made Cundum – He, nor dreads the Ills/ Of Shankers or Cordee, or Bubos dire!"
Shankers, cordee and bubos refer to the various swellings, sores and other ills associated with venereal diseases, including syphilis.
Van Hensbergen is part of a team working on the Digital Miscellanies Index project, which is investigating the literary culture and reading habits of the 18th century by studying the poetry collections or "miscellanies" common at the time.
"The Cabinet is unusual," said Van Hensbergen, "because it shows us that people read pornographic writing directly alongside the verse of major poets. This raises interesting questions about what counts as literature and where the boundaries between high and low culture lie. These ideas were much more fluid in the 18th century than they are today."