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Journal of the History of Collections Advance Access originally published online on October 9, 2007
Journal of the History of Collections 2008 20(1):101-112; doi:10.1093/jhc/fhm019
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

The rites of man

The British Museum and the sexual imagination in Victorian Britain

Dominic Janes


  Abstract

In the nineteenth century, the British Museum possessed a locked store of erotic objects. However, this did not serve to sanitize the rest of the collection. I use the evidence of an anonymous tract, Idolomania, set in the context of other literary productions of the time, to show how a wave of anti-Catholic agitation led to claims that the public displays of the British Museum were saturated with morally dangerous material. A wide range of objects, images and motifs were interpreted as evidence of pagan fertility cults, thus throwing into question the seemliness of the Museum's public displays.

Address for correspondence Dr Dominic Janes, Faculty of Continuing Education, Birkbeck College, 26 Russell Square, London wc1b 5dq. d.janes{at}bbk.ac.uk


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