The Book of Love: The Story of the Kamasutra [Hardcover]

James McConnachie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 27, 2008

An engaging, enlightening “biography” of the ancient Hindu manuscript that became the world’s most famous sex manual

 

The Kamasutra is one of the world’s best-known yet least-understood texts, its title instantly familiar but its actual contents widely misconstrued. In the popular imagination, it is a work of practical pornography, a how-to guide of absurdly acrobatic sexual techniques. Yet the book began its long life in third-century India as something quite different: a seven-volume vision of an ideal life of urbane sophistication, offering advice on matters from friendship to household decoration. Over the ensuing centuries, the Kamasutra was first celebrated, then neglected, and very nearly lost—until an outrageous adventurer introduced it to the West and earned literary immortality.

In lively and lucid prose, James McConnachie provides a rare, intimate look at the exquisite civilization that produced this cultural cornerstone. He details the quest of famed explorer Richard F. Burton, who—along with his clandestine coterie of libertines and iconoclasts—unleashed the Kamasutra on English society as a deliberate slap at Victorian prudishness and paternalism. And he describes how the Kamasutra was driven underground into the hands of pirate pornographers, until the end of the Lady Chatterley obscenity ban thrust it once more into contentious daylight.

 

The first work to tell the full story of the Kamasutra, The Book of Love explores how a remarkable way of looking at the world came to be cradled between book covers—and survived.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Tracing the celebrated sex manual from its palm-leaf manuscript origins in third-century India to contemporary coffee-table book, travel writer McConnachie adeptly explains that in addition to teaching 64 erotic techniques, the seven-volume Kamasutra details every aspect of a rich man's lifestyle, including grooming, home decor and entertainment. The treatise on pleasure also offers a rare ancient depiction of women's social and sexual lives. The author relates the tale of the famed British explorer and Orientalist Richard Burton, who brought the work to the West. An Indian Army officer in the 1840s, Burton devoted himself to the study of Indian languages and sexual culture. Around 1870, as a British consul, Burton became involved in a project to translate obscure erotic classics into English (though contrary to popular belief, he did not translate the Kamasutra himself) and masterminded the work's promotion in a repressive Victorian climate. McConnachie also relates the key role of Foster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot as Burton's collaborator. Though less titillating than the topic would imply, this is a solidly researched, absorbing glimpse into the history of erotica publishing. 8 pages of color illus. (May 27)
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From Booklist

Kamasutra connotes sexy, but what is the so-called book of love, anyway? In an impressively researched, charming volume, McConnachie traces the Kamasutra’s history from its creation by the third-century sage Vatsyayana as a guide to the good life for urbane dandies. It does, indeed, list acrobatic sexual postures, but most of it concerns manners and the arts, as if Martha Stewart were collaborating with Hugh Hefner. Little being known of Vatsyayana, McConnachie describes the genre to which the Kamasutra belongs and places it in its original cultural context before turning to the man most associated in the Western mind with the Kamasutra, the central figure here, adventurer and author Richard Burton, who brought the Kamasutra to England despite draconian censorship laws. He sponsored the translation and provided notations that were as scandalous as (in some cases, more scandalous than) those of the original. A relatively brief summary of the Kamasutra’s continuing popularity, especially during the free-love sixties, concludes McConnachie’s work. Since not a single posture is described, consider it G-rated. --Patricia Monaghan

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books; 1st American Edition edition (May 27, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805088180
• ISBN-13: 978-0805088182
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,741,678 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The History of the World's Most Famous Sex Manual, May 27, 2008

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Book of Love: The Story of the Kamasutra (Hardcover)

The _Kamasutra_ is a misunderstood book, and it has been misunderstood largely because of the censors who have given it a reputation for naughty depictions of sexual variety and athleticism. Not only was the original book without illustrations, it describes only eighteen positions for lovemaking, most of them quite within the realm of execution by non-gymnasts. It has nothing to do with tantric sex and much to do with civilized behavior. It describes an idealized way of life rather than being a practical sex manual for its time or for our own (the excellent _The Guide to Getting It On!_ is much more fun and informative for current purposes). The wild sex that the word "kamasutra" now promises (courtesy of those, especially the censors, who have enabled its sensationalizing) isn't a theme in the book itself. According to James McConnachie in _The Book Of Love: The Story of the Kamasutra_ (Metropolitan Books), the sex in the book is mannered and moral. How the book got the reputation as a repository for sensational sex secrets is McConnachie's elegantly-told tale, and it is fascinating, reaching back to the third century and all the way up into our own.

The author of the _Kamasutra_ was one Vatsyayana, who described himself as a white-haired scholar and thus long past sexual distractions. He was interested in rescuing a sexual tradition from an increasingly ascetic third-century India. Vatsyayana describes the life and surroundings of a smart, young urbanite with plenty of money and leisure. There are seven books within the _Kamasutra_, only one of which has to do with the surprisingly moderate bedroom acrobatics. When eighteenth century translators were eager to go to work on the text, it was surprisingly hard to find a full text to work with. When the text was discovered and gathered, the job was done under the inspiration of Sir Richard Burton, who was quite interested in shocking his fellow Britons into what he felt was a more open discussion of sex. Burton was not, as many assume, the translator, although he was the guiding genius of the project. He provided notes, and his notoriety guaranteed that the text would not be printed in some obscure academic journal. McConnachie writes that not only did Burton ensure the text would be well circulated within his erotomaniac circle, it was his "status as a great explorer and Orientalist that lent the _Kamasutra_ authenticity as a piece of anthropological archaeology, offering a fig-leaf cover of at least semi-respectability." When it was published in 1883, it was in an expensive edition, to avoid charges of corrupting the working classes while it had a good run among their betters.

Pirate publishers, however, had a field day with the text immediately after it was issued, and were especially interested in leaving out everything but the "good" bits, and putting in pictures. With attempts of suppression, it lead a shadowy life as a forbidden book and has been associated in most people's minds with pornography. When the ban against Lady Chatterley collapsed in 1960, it became an over-the-counter commodity. McConnachie praises a scholarly one from 2002, although the Burton edition will always be a landmark, and will always be in print and timely. Furthermore, we have The Bedside Kama Sutra or Red-Hot Sex the Kama Sutra Way, or Deepak Chopra's version (I'm no prude, but I am too inhibited to think of even looking into that one), not to mention a couple of examples of pop-up book versions ("even if the bits that pop up are not necessarily those you'd expect", McConnachie jokes). The book has escaped from grubby, clandestine shelves in dark bookshops, but usually in ways that transformed it from its original content and purpose. McConnachie has written an amusing and instructive history of an important text and its sometimes preposterous interpretations and social effects.