The Horrors of the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and Sexuality in 19th. Century America

Now a classic in the field, The Horrors of the Half-KnownLife is an important foundational text in the construction of masculinity, female identity, and the history of midwivery.

G. J. Barker-Benfield is Professor of History and Women’s Studies at SUNY-Albany. He is the coeditor with Catherine Clinton of Portraits of American Women and author of TheCulture of Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Sexand Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain.