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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1856 | Brooklyn

I Dare Not Withdraw

Walt Whitman’s amorous side. More

c. 397 | Hippo

The Brambles of Lust

St. Augustine flounders in a broiling sea of fornication.More

1745 | Philadelphia

In Praise of Older Women

Benjamin Franklin likes his ladies mature. More

Charts & Graphs

Lonely Hearts

Personal ads from the past two hundred years.

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Sufi mystic and poet Rumi.

French general and emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

Black and white image of Persian lyric poet Hafez.

Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.

—Quentin Crisp, 1968

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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Lapham’sDaily

Roundtable

Lapham’s Quarterly Is on Hiatus

By Lapham’s Quarterly

But the American Agora Foundation is already planning for the future. More

The Colosseum, attributed to Robert Eaton, c. 1855.

DÉjÀ Vu

Monumental Mistakes

2023:

Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.

c. 1850:

Thompson of Sunderland makes his mark on Pompey’s pillar.

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Terracotta funerary plaque, Greek, Attic, c. 520 BC.

The World in Time

Robert D. Kaplan

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power. More

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