Books by Kate Thomas
Lonely Planet West Africa (Travel Guide)
by Lonely Planet, Tom Masters, Jean-Bernard Carillet, Anthony Ham, Anja Mutic, Emilie Filou, Paul Clammer, Caroline Sieg, Kate Thomas, Vanessa Wruble
West Africa has cachet and soul. Home to African landscapes of our imaginations and inhabited by an astonishing diversity of traditional peoples, this is Africa as it once was
Inspirational images, destination highlights and recommendations from our expert authors
Planning features and top itineraries to help you plan the perfect trip
Local secrets and hidden travel gems that will make your trip unique
PLUS Music, Arts and Craftwork, Peoples of West Africa and Safe Travel essays
Coverage includes: Planning chapters, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cameroon, Cape Verde,
Côte d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, Understand and Survival chapters
Copies
No copies available.
Postal Pleasures: Sex, Scandal, and Victorian Letters
by Kate Thomas
In 1889 uniformed post-boys were discovered moonlighting in a West End brothel frequented by men of the upper classes. "The Cleveland Street Scandal" erupted and Victorian Britain faced the possibility that the Post Office-a bureaucratic backbone of nation and empire-was inspiring and servicing subversive sexual behavior. However, the unlikely alliance between sex and the postal service was not exactly the news the sensational press made it out to be. Postal Pleasures explores the relationship between illicit sex and the Royal Mail from reforms initiated in 1840 up to the imperial end of the nineteenth century. With a combination of historical details and literary analyses, Kate Thomas illustrates how the postal network, its uniformed employees, and its material trappings-envelopes, postmarks, stamps-were used to signal and circulate sexual intrigue. For many, the idea of an envelope promiscuously jostling its neighbors in a post boy's bag, or the notion that secrets passed through the eyes and fingers of telegraph girls, was more stimulating than the actual contents of correspondence. Writers like Anthony Trollope, Eliza Lynn Lynton, Henry James, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, and others, invoked the postal system as both an instrument and a metaphor for sexual relations that crossed and double-crossed lines of class, marriage, and heterosexuality. Postal Pleasures adds a new dimension to studies of the era as it uncovers the unlikely linkage between the Victorian Post Office and the queer networks it inspired.
Copies
No copies available.