Heurs et malheurs du Tableau de l'amour conjugal de N. Venette

Colette Piau : The fortunes of Nicolas Venette's tableau de vamour ; conjugal. ; One of the first sex education manuals, Tableau de l'amour conjugal, by Nicolas Venette, a La Rochelle doctor, was published in Cologne in 1702 without official authorisation. This original edition continued to be republished in the 18th and 19th Centuries while, from 1772 onwards, several bowdlerized authorised editions appeared. The original edition was sold clandestinely among the poor. Until 1970 the work was sold in various versions as a contemporary text. Disapproval appears to have been based on religious and social rather than scientific considerations. The popularisation of sexual knowledge and recognition of women's difference and even sexual equality undermined the status of the couple in the patriarchal social order. But this ideological condemnation also ensured the work's success.