What Is Love?

A pioneering sex manual and manifesto on free love. "Love is one of the chief sources of human happiness; its state among making requires improvement, and better means of enjoying it are requires to be known. The following pages have been written with that and with no other view, and the Publisher places his motives for judgement in the hands of the young, the middle-aged, the healthy, the happy, the virtuous, and the sensible part of the community of both sexes." -- Preface, What is Love? (1826). Richard Carlile, a leading figure in early-nineteenth-century radical London, was notorious for his blend of republicansim, religious free though and libertarianism. In the pamphlet What is Love?, he presented his most sustained statement of 'free love', advocating not only honesty and equality for both sexes in matters of love and sex, but also advice and encouragement in the use of birth control. With an introduction by Michael Bush which places the pamphlet in the wider context of nineteenth-century metropolitan radicalism, and a witty preface which view it as a forerunner to today's sex manuals, What is Love? is both a fascinating historical document and a piece of propaganda arguably as pertinent today as it was in the 1820s.