Wayland Young
Related: 1964 - Eros - forbidden - sex - West - society - Grove Press
Eros denied; sex in western society (1964) - Wayland Young [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Biography
Wayland Hilton Young, 2nd Baron Kennet (born August 2, 1923) is a British writer and SDP and Labour Party politician.
Young has published on a wide range of mostly political topics, especially on the politics of Italy, on disarmament and arms control, on the churches of London, and on various political scandals, notably the Profumo Affair and the Montesi scandal. His 1964 work Eros Denied was a groundbreaking manifesto of the sexual revolution. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_Young [Sept 2005]
Eros Denied (1964) - Wayland Young
Eros Denied: Sex in Western Society
by Wayland Young
Grove Press, 415 pp., $7.50
Mr. Wayland Young's researches into erotica through the ages have been diligently undertaken, and, one must assume, accurately expounded. They will save those interested in the subject the trouble, and possibly the embarrassment, of procuring access to erotica normally kept from indiscriminate public inspection. Mr. Young, who is a peer of the realm under the style Baron Kennet of the Dene, must be considered a somewhat unlikely individual to display such zeal and dedication in this particular field. A Frank Harris, even a Havelock Ellis, yes; but this earnest Labour scion of true-blue Tory stock who nourishes ambitions of being Mr. Harold Wilson's choice for some minor ministerial position, say a Lord-in-Waiting—surprising! One should not, however, underestimate his disinterestedness in publishing a book like Eros Denied. The Labour Party, with its Noncomformist antecedents, is far more prudish than the Conservatives, as was clearly apparent at the time of the Profumo Affair. The Marquis de Sade is not a name to conjure with in Transport House.
In response to the above article (July 30, 1964
To the Editors:
I don't propose to take general issue with Mr. Muggeridge's grotesque review of Eros Denied, the motives for which are as obscure to me as I dare say they are to you and your readers. But one distortion I must take up. I wrote in the book "It seems…likely to me that there will next be a time of perfect sexual freedom, by which I don't mean everybody laying everybody else regardless, but perfect freedom for anyone to live in the manner he has been conditioned to by chance and society" etc. Mr. Muggeridge, quoting this sentence, suppresses without indication the passage in italics in order to suggest that "everybody laying everybody else regardless" is just about what I do mean and advocate.
I put that clause in, and many similar ones throughout the book, because I know that there are people who cannot help taking anything friendly one may say about sex as a call for total license. It had not occurred to me that a reviewer would go so far as to remove one clause out of a sentence in quotation, and I should like your readers to know it was there.
May I also let it be known through your columns that I am not responsible for, and disapprove of, the way Eros Denied is being advertised by its publisher, Grove Press? The advertising is sometimes factually incorrect, and in my opinion it appeals to a salacious interest which the book itself is not designed to arouse.
Wayland Young
London
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