History of Prostitution among All the Peoples of the World since Antiquity

Jacob, P. L., 1806-1884Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
571K words
Chapters
58

Tags

Foreign Language Books History and Culture Historical ReappraisalSocial ObservationHumanistic CareSocial CritiqueMoral DilemmaCultural ChangeFolk CustomsCross-Cultural View

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Histoire de la prostitution chez tous les peuples du monde depuis l'antiquité laAuthor: Jacob, P. L., 1806-1884,Language: French, Class: HQ: Social sciences: The family, Marriage, Sex and Gender, Release Date: Apr 23, 2014

Editor's review

This is a world social history written in French, spanning from antiquity to the author's own time, examining prostitution within the contexts of customs, law, religion, and urban life across peoples. Its value lies not in contemporary theoretical analysis but in showing how a nineteenth-century scholar collected, organized, and interpreted cross-cultural historical sources on sexuality and gender, making it useful for those studying social history, the history of customs, gender history, and historiography. As a free Project Gutenberg eBook, it is easy to search and cross-reference, suitable as a primary-source lead or classroom supplement. Readers should note the author's moral judgments, selection of materials, and period limitations, and should not take the views expressed as definitive. The work is substantial in length and organized by both chronology and region, best read selectively with specific questions rather than straight through.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Start with the table of contents and introduction, then select chapters by region or period to grasp the overall structure.
  2. Note the author's sources and tone of judgment as you read, distinguishing historical fact from opinion.
  3. Compare with modern works on gender and social history to test the book's explanatory framework.
  4. Make flashcards for proper names and institutional terms to avoid interruptions from vocabulary issues.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58

FAQ

Is this book in French, and what language level is needed? According to the metadata, the book is in French. It is nineteenth-century academic writing with long sentences and many proper names, so good French reading ability is recommended; beginners may use a dictionary and introductory materials, or read only the chapters that interest them.
Is this book suitable as a theoretical reference for contemporary gender studies? Not really. It is more a work of nineteenth-century social and customs history, valuable for its source organization and period perspective rather than contemporary theory. Readers should treat it as a historical document and note the author's moral judgments and source limitations.
What are the practical advantages of the electronic edition? Published by Project Gutenberg as a free eBook, it allows full-text search, copying passages, and cross-referencing with other sources. Readers can locate peoples, periods, or institutional terms by keyword, making it suitable for research-oriented selective reading and source tracking.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Jacob, P. L., 1806-1884 Author

P. L. Jacob (1806–1884) was a French writer, bibliophile and scholar of history and letters, usually listed in library catalogues under the name "Jacob, P. L."; his full name and detailed biography are only sparsely documented in publicly available sources. Twelve of his works are held in this collection, ranging from studies of manners, dress and ceremony in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, through a multi-volume history of prostitution across the world, to the art of writing in ciphers, literary tales told to children, and miscellanies of the strange such as Curiosités Infernales. His writing favours wide-ranging historical material and anecdote, often retelling and arranging older documents in an accessible style that blends scholarship with a taste for the curious, plain in language and dense in detail. His books circulated widely in nineteenth-century French popular history and book culture, and are still consulted by scholars of custom, dress and the history of sexuality.