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INTRODUCTION

Before I begin: should you happen to be a child, please close this book and hand it to an adult. If you are an adult, please do not leave this book within reach of a child, no matter how keen a letter writer they might be. Instead, may I suggest introducing them to some of the more age-appropriate titles in this series, beginning with Letters of Note: Dogs and Letters of Note: Cats.

Letters of Note: Sex, should you be in any doubt, is a book about sex. More specifically, it is an exploration of sex, and our relationship to it, through the lens of the humble letter – a form of correspondence which, given its ostensibly private nature, is perfectly suited to discussing such intimate matters.

Both tone and focus of these letters are wide-ranging. We begin with a letter of sisterly advice from anthropologist Margaret Mead to her younger sibling who had recently had her first sexual experience; we end, 150 pages later, with a missive from Australian composer Percy Grainger that is so sexually explicit as to approach the surreal. The journey from first to last is winding. You will read a pained plea from the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement to the man with whom she longed to share her bed but for reasons of religion could not; you will see the request once sent to a member of the Rolling Stones by a sculptor who wished to immortalise his ‘spectacular’ instrument; and you will, I hope, be fascinated by a frank exchange of letters between two novelists in which is discussed the ‘last sexual taboo.’ Topics broached in these unabashed pages include masturbation, prostitution, celibacy, promiscuity, incest, sex toys, pornography, BDSM, bestiality, erectile dysfunction, and pubic lice, and they come through the pens and typewriters of such people as Anaïs Nin, Frida Kahlo, Martha Gellhorn, Mae West, Marcel Proust, Henry Miller, Dian Fossey, and Georgia O’Keeffe. A heady mix indeed.

Since work on this volume began in 2019 I have trawled through thousands of letters, flicked through hundreds of books, and entered millions of alarm-triggering words and phrases into search engines, all in search of the selection you now hold, and I am of the firm opinion that each one deserves its place. I hope you will agree.

Shaun Usher

2020