Sex and books: London's most erotic writers
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Thanks to Jane Edwardes, Rachel Halliburton, Nina Caplan, Jonathan Derbyshire. Portraits Simian Coates and Rob Greig
Posted: Tue Feb 26 2008 -
Time Out books editor John O‘Connell explains the reasoning behind Time Out‘s pick of London‘s 30 finest-ever peddlers of smut, filth and depravity. Parents be warned: this survey is for grown-ups only
See London's 30 most erotic writers
London has always been a palace of sexual varieties: both the hub of Britain’s sex trade and the chamber in which, since the advent of the printed word, debates about liberty, repression and obscenity have raged and (occasionally) been resolved. It’s the country’s erotic centre – its G-spot, if you will. Which is why Time Out decided it was high time to consider the ways in which sex has been celebrated by London writers down the centuries.
Our Top 30 chart of London’s rudest writers collects, in a single heaving but well-ventilated space, the authors we feel have contributed the most to our understanding of the city’s complex sexual psychology. What do we mean by ‘rude’? Boldly transgressive as well as pornographic (after all, anyone can be pornographic), seductive and titillating as well as obscene and, always, well written.
Feature continuesAdvertisementOne of the functions of nostalgia is to purge the past of elements that don’t chime with our limited sense of how people once lived. So it’s salutary, and oddly bracing, to be reminded that dildos were around in the sixteenth century (Thomas Nashe) and that ‘cunt’ (okay, ‘queynte’) was a slang term for female genitalia in Chaucer’s day.
But don’t just take our word for it. Our saucy scribblers come endorsed by some of London’s finest contemporary writers, including Martin Amis, Sarah Waters, Will Self and Jilly Cooper.
So put down your whip, unbuckle that gimp mask and let’s begin…
1 Walter, aka Henry Spencer Ashbee
2 Alan Hollinghurst
3 Kenneth Tynan
4 Algeron Charles Swinburne
5 Thomas Nashe
6 John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester
7 William Shakespeare
8 Geoffrey Chaucer
9 Gerald Kersh
10 John Cleland
11 Havelock Ellis
12 Hanif Kureishi
13 Sigmund Freud
14 Henry Fielding
15 James Boswell
16 William Wycherley
17 Daniel Defoe
18 Mark Ravenhill
19 Geoff Nicholson
20 Maxim Jakubowski
21 Oscar Moore
23 Sebastian Horsley
24 Molly Parkin
25 Stewart Home
26 Mary Robinson
27 Patrick Marber
28 JG Ballard
29 Lady Caroline Lamb
30 Anthony Neilson
Thanks to Jane Edwardes, Rachel Halliburton, Nina Caplan, Jonathan Derbyshire. Portraits Simian Coates and Rob Greig- Add your comment to this feature
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7 comments
I much perefr informative articles like this to that high brow literature.
Stewart Home is a genius -- if you don't like his books I will follow you around and annoy you -- forever. Starting now.
No two people will ever agree on a list of this sort, but as the author of thirty erotic novels I feel I at least have a better grip on the subject than most. Aside from the controversial and almost certainly incorrect attribution of "Walter's" work to Ashbee, Freud and Ellis seem very peculiar choices in that neither was an eroticist at all. A few other entries seem eccentric, or somewhat random, but in general the list meets with my approval. ;o)
One other thing... It may be true to say that anyone can be pornographic, although Mary Whitehouse might have struggled, but it is not true to say that anyone can write erotica, or pornography if you prefer the term. Just as with even romance or horror, it may appear simple but to do it at all well requires both dedication and a great deal of background knowledge.
"Walter" was not Henry Spencer Ashbee. Only Ian Gibson thought they were the same, which only shows that he has no notion of chronology,and a cloth ear for writers' styles.
Walter has been convincingly identified as a military officer, of no distinction except for having written his memoirs.
Ashbee was a bibliophile, and a much better writer than "Walter" (and utterly different in style), but he had no sexual experience.
Ashbee quite possibly died a virgin, while "Walter" quite clearly was not writing porno fantasy, but real - and often unflattering - experience, a sort of sexual Henry Mayhew.
wow
Why is Anais Nin not on this list?
What about Rofl Lundgren and his erotic tales?