Olympia, by Édouard Manet, 1863. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France.

Eros

Volume II, Number 1 | winter 2009

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The Toilette of Venus (detail), by François Boucher, 1751.

Preamble

Transits of Venus

By Lewis H. Lapham

The commodification of sex and love has shaped our attitudes toward both over the past half century, but eros is more than just dollars and cents.

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Venus of Urbino, by Titian, 1538.

Eros Between the Covers

By Francine Prose

A reconsideration of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.

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Map

The Grand Tour

Sexual hazards from around the world and throughout time.

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1694 | London

Sweet Regret

I should long to be fifteen.More

c. 950 BC | Jerusalem

Treasure on Earth

The joints of thy thighs are like jewels.More

1856 | Brooklyn

I Dare Not Withdraw

Walt Whitman’s amorous side. More

Charts & Graphs

Getting in the Mood

Aphrodisiac foods in the centuries before Viagra.

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Austro-German poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

Painting of Benjamin Franklin reading a batch of papers next to a classical bust.

British writer Vita Sackville-West.

Black and white photograph of French writer and feminist Simone de Beauvoir.

Black and white photograph of English poet and librarian Philip Larkin.

Canadian musician and author Leonard Cohen.

Love lasteth as long as the money endureth.

—William Caxton, 1476

black and white pencil drawing of Moliere in an ornate frame

Black and white photograph of French novelist, essayist, and playwright Albert Camus.

Molière & Albert Camus

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