Acknowledgements

It took me a long time to write this book. Now that I’m wrapping it up, I feel lost for words to express my gratitude to those who made it possible. I’m especially grateful to two people without whom it definitely would not exist: Colette Colligan and Jim Secord. Both are kind and patient teachers. Colette took me on as a PhD student, introduced me to the study of print culture, and taught me the joys (and frustrations) of bibliographic detective work. Jim sponsored my postdoctoral fellowship, introduced me to the history of science, and helped me figure out how to shape my findings into a narrative. I couldn’t have asked for better mentors.

Several organizations supported my work. A Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship and a Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant numbers 65151 and 78730] funded the early stages of my research, enabling me to spend an academic year in London and devote myself fully to my doctoral dissertation. A Research Fellowship in Medical Humanities from the Wellcome Trust [grant number 106548/Z/14/Z] enabled me to expand my research well beyond what I was able to accomplish during my doctoral work and write a first draft of the book. A start-up grant from Toronto Metropolitan University provided funding for the images, and supplemental funding from the Wellcome Trust enabled me to publish an open-access electronic version.

My research would not have been possible without staff at many libraries and archives who enabled me to locate, examine, and, in some cases, reproduce portions of the primary material discussed in the book, and access secondary sources. Special thanks to staff at the Archive of British Printing and Publishing (University of Reading), the British Library, Cambridge University Library, the London Metropolitan Archives, the National Archives, the Archives of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, Simon Fraser University Library, Toronto Metropolitan University Library, and the Wellcome Library, where I did most of my research. A special word of thanks also goes to Ann Hale, who visited the British Library on my behalf after I moved to Toronto and photographed several obscure items that I belatedly realized I needed to read.

Many colleagues read chapter drafts, discussed different aspects of the book with me, and cheered me on. Thanks especially to Maria Damkjær, who read and commented on an entire draft of the manuscript, and to Rich McKay, Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, and Charissa Varma for having lengthy discussions about the book with me at a crucial stage. More broadly, I’m grateful to the communities that sustained me across three institutions and two continents. In Vancouver and the surrounding area, Marc Acherman, Livia Chan, Sarah Creel, Amy De’Ath, Peter Dickinson, Kim O’Donnell, Michael Everton, Carole Gerson, Riley Kearns, Erin Keating, Mary Elizabeth Leighton, Carolyn Lesjak, Jennifer Anne Scott, Lisa Surridge, and Lise Jaillant all supported the work that informs this book in different ways. Along with Charissa, Jesse, and Rich, so, too, did Elizabeth Smith, Salim Al-Gailani, Leah Astbury, Jenny Bangham, Victoria Bartels, Mary Brazelton, Jack Dixon, Mike Drymoussis, Jo Edge, Meira Gold, Nick Hopwood, Tamara Hug, Boris Jardine, Josh Kaggie, Lauren Kassell, Josh Nall, Thea and Jon Reimer, Edwin Rose, Louisa Russell, Verity Smith, François Sherwood, Lesley Steinitz, James Poskett, and Michelle Wallis in Cambridge. These folks are great company and, just as importantly, helped me forget about the book from time to time and enjoy life off the page.

I’m thankful to have been able to attend the Media History Seminar at the University of London’s Institute for Advanced Study while I was in the UK. Along with the invited speakers, seminar regulars, including Ann, Laurel Brake, Helena Goodwyn, Andrew King, Matthew Rubery, Mark Turner, and Liwen Zhang, helped me think about print culture in new and productive ways. I’m grateful, too, to Kate Fisher and Jana Funke for inviting me to events connected with their Rethinking Sexology project at the University of Exeter; to the scholars I met through those and other events connected with work in the histories of medicine and sexuality, including Jen Grove, Kate Davison, Agata Ignaciuk, Sarah Jones, Ina Linge-Granger, Claire Jones, Lesley Hall, Sally Shuttleworth, Jon Topham, Alison Moulds, and Sally Frampton; to Lisa Z. Sigel and Kathleen Lubey for their expert feedback on my work on the pornography trade; and to the community of academics on Twitter and, later, Bluesky, who I enjoyed chatting with about the highs and lows of research. When I moved to Toronto, I was welcomed by another delightful community. Thanks especially to Jason Boyd, Tina Young Choi, Joaney Cole-Abdul, Colleen Derkatch, Laura Fisher, Wendy Francis, Naomi Hamer, Afrina Hashem, Leslie Howsam, Lorraine Janzen-Kooistra, Craig Jennex, Lauren Kirshner, Melanie Knight, Anne-Marie Lee-Loy, Andrew O’Malley, Amy Peng, Simon Stern, Pamela Sugiman, Monique Tschofen, Justin Vanlieshout, and Olivia Wong for their support as I finished the book.

I was lucky to have great editorial support as I prepared to publish it, too. Many thanks to Lucy Rhymer, my editor at Cambridge University Press, for believing in the book and shepherding it into print with such grace and efficiency, and to editorial assistant Rosa Martin, who patiently answered a steady stream of queries. I’m also grateful to the anonymous readers for their engagement with the manuscript. Their suggestions made Selling Sexual Knowledge a better book. Jeremy Andriano, who worked as my research assistant in 2023–4, also left his mark: thanks to Jeremy for correcting some truly laughable typos, tracking down last-minute references, and noting places where clarification would be useful.

My family members must now know more than they ever cared to about nineteenth-century publishing or sexual culture. It’s a testament to their love for me that I need to qualify that sentence: my parents, Mike and Anne Bull; my siblings, Martha, Jonathan, and Eve; my grandparents, Beverly and Arthur Bull; and my in-laws, Richard Ball and Mickey Guy, Seb and Erica Ball, and Mike Ball, never complained. Lastly, and above all, I’m grateful for the support of my funny, kind, and extraordinarily patient husband, Ralph Ball, and my son, Riley, who has never known a time when I was not working on this book. This book is dedicated to them.