Rare Books on Sex Have Spiced Things Up at a Library Franklin Founded

The Library Company of Philadelphia, created in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin, has received a gift of 1,500 volumes about sexuality dating back to the 17th century.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/arts/rare-books-sex-library-benjamin-franklin.html

https://archive.ph/vGCaF


Charles E. Rosenberg has been giving rare books to the Library Company of Philadelphia since the 1960s. His most recent gift was a collection of some 1,500 texts about sexuality.

There is much history to celebrate on America’s 250th birthday at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the oldest public rare book collection in the United States, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1731. Forty-five years older than the country itself, the landmark nonprofit once extended borrowing privileges to delegates of the First and Second Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention. It served as the research arm of a nascent American government before there was an official Library of Congress. Now, as ever, it displays Franklin’s electrostatic machine and William Penn’s desk. But there’s also something a bit racier on the menu as the library celebrates the recent gift of 1,500 rare volumes illuminating centuries of attitudes on sex and the reproductive anatomy.

The sexuality collection is the latest donation by Charles E. Rosenberg, 89, an emeritus professor of the history of science at Harvard University, who has already bequeathed the library some 15,000 books on the social aspects of medicine, topics covered in six books he himself wrote. He described his latest gift as largely “how-to-run-your-sex-life books.” “There’s definitely some graphic materials but they’re not intended as pornographic,” said Rachel D’Agostino, the library’s curator of printed books.


One aspect of the gift for researchers is the ability to track how mores evolved over the centuries.

The collection includes dozens of variations of what was once a cornerstone primer on sexuality, “Aristotle’s Masterpiece.” It was not really by Aristotle, and it was hardly a masterpiece, but the widely pirated, often questionably informed manual was in virtually continuous print for more than two centuries since its first anonymous publication in London in 1684. Mary Fissell, a professor in the history of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, who is writing a book about the book, said the unknown author had posed as the Greek philosopher who gained a reputation (largely undeserved and not at all serious) in 17th-century England as a Dr. Ruth of antiquity. But the popularity of the underground best seller waned when the anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock suppressed sex books in this country in the 1870s. “That killed it,” she said.


Rachel D’Agostino, the curator of printed books at the Library Company.

As it approaches its 300th birthday, the Library Company is marking its own milestone — a pending merger with Temple University to shore up its shaky finances and expand its academic and public footprint. The deal, approved by shareholders of both would-be partners last December, awaits approval by the Pennsylvania Attorney General and the state judicial unit that oversees charities, known as Orphans’ Court. Like many nonprofits, the library, with an annual budget of roughly $3 million, has struggled financially in recent years and its staff, which numbered 28 two years ago, has shrunk to 16. Joining forces would expand scholarly vistas for the university’s nearly 35,000 students and faculty while securing the library’s public future, John Fry, Temple’s president, said in an interview. “It’s the best shot for it to continue another 300 years.”

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