The essays in this collection explore representations of and responses to sexual violence over the course of the long eighteenth century. Contributors examine the underlying ideologies that spawned these representations, confronting the social, political, legal and aesthetic conditions of the day.

Part I Overview and Scope; Introduction, Anne Greenfield; Chapter 1 Researching Sexual Violence, 1660-1800: A Critical Analysis, Julie Gammon; Part II Legal and Social History; Chapter 2 'For the Repressing of the Most Wicked and Felonious Rapes and Ravishments of Women': Rape Law in England, 1660-1800, Mary R. Block; Chapter 3 From Rape to Marriage: Questions of Consent in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Katie Barclay; Chapter 4 The Disordered Fundament: Sexual Violence on Boys and Sodomy Trial Narratives in the Old Bailey Proceedings, Aparna Gollapudi; Part III Drama; Chapter 5 The Titillation of Dramatic Rape, 1660-1720, Anne Greenfield; Chapter 6 Violently Erotic: Representing Rape in Restoration Drama, Ann Marie Byrd; Chapter 7 'A Most Obedient Wife': Passive Resistance and Tory Politics in Eliza Haywood's A Wife to be Lett, Loring Pfeiffer; Chapter 8 Staging Rape in the Age of Walpole: Sexual Violence and the Politics of Dramatic Adaptation in 1730s Britain, Jennifer L. Airey; Part IV Fiction; Chapter 9 'What Do You Take Me For?': Rape and Virtue in The Female Quixote, Robin Runia; Chapter 10 'Nothing But Violent Methods Will Do': Heterosexual Rape and the Violation of Female Friendship, Dawn A. Nawrot; Chapter 11 Bringing Sentimental Fiction to its (Anti-)Climax: Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey, Nichol Weizenbeck; Part V Other Genres; Chapter 12 'Violence That's Wicked for a Man to Use': Sex, Gender and Violence in the Eighteenth Century, Lena Olsson; Chapter 13 The Rhetoric of Rape: William Blake's Visions of the Daughters of Albion As Eighteenth-Century Rape Trial, Misty Krueger; Chapter 14 The Horror of the Horns: Pan's Attempted Rape of Syrinx in Early Eighteenth-Century Visual Art, Melanie Cooper-Dobbin;