PETER CRYLE is author of Geometry in the Boudoir (1996), The Telling of the Act (2002), and La Crise du plaisir, 1740-1830 (2003). He also co-edited Libertine Enlightenment with Lisa O'Connell (2004) and Sexuality at the Fin de Siècle (2008) with Christopher Forth.
ALISON MOORE is a Scholar of Modern European Intellectual History. She teaches and researches in International Studies and Cultural Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.She is the author of Sexual Myths of Modernity; Sadism, Masochism and Historical Teleology (2011).

Introduction. A Long History of a Pseudo-Scientific Object Frigiditas and Impotentia Female Impotence in the Nineteenth Century Vaginismus The Late Nineteenth Century: A Multiplicity of Genres The Wedding Night Treatment 1: Medicine Treatment 2: Psychology Relocating Marie Bonaparte's Clitoris Conclusion Bibliography

This first major study of a curiously neglected term in the history of sexuality will intrigue students, scholars and enthusiasts alike. The authors take us through a journey across four centuries, showing how notions of sexual coldness and frigidity have been thought about by legal, medical, psychiatric, psychoanalytic and literary writers.