Charles Upchurch is Associate Professor of History at Florida State University.

List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART ONE. UNDERSTANDINGS
1. Families and Sex between Men
2. Class, Masculinity, and Spaces
PART TWO. EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY CHANGES
3. Law and Reform in the 1820s
4. Public Men: The Metropolitan Police
5. Unnatural-Assault Reporting in the London Press
PART THREE. IMPLICATIONS
6. Patterns within the Changes
7. Conclusion: Character and Medicine
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index

This book examines changing perceptions of sex between men in early Victorian Britain, a significant yet surprisingly little explored period in the history of Western sexuality. Looking at the dramatic transformations of the era-changes in the family and in the law, the emergence of the world's first police force, the growth of a national media, and more-Charles Upchurch asks how perceptions of same-sex desire changed between men, in families, and in the larger society. To illuminate these questions, he mines a rich trove of previously unexamined sources, including hundreds of articles pertaining to sex between men that appeared in mainstream newspapers. The first book to relate this topic to broader economic, social, and political changes in the early nineteenth century, Before Wilde sheds new light on the central question of how and when sex acts became identities.