The Penguin Book of Vice

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 014016913X
• ISBN13: 9780140169133
• Release Date: February 1995
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.3" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

A huge variety of writing, prose, and poetry on Vice

What an extraodinary book. It is one of those books which you can easily dip in and out of, or spend hours reading. It is a collection of writing on various vices, from Alfresco Sex through to Tobacco and everything in between. What lifts it up from the banal is the enormous range of poets and writers sourced, and the immense talents it draws from. The Earl of Rochester's inditement on St James's Park sits very comfortably next to Lorca in the chapter on Alfresco sex, along with various others including some classic local rhymes. The editors have struck a very rich mine of earthy, often hilarious, writing which entertains not just on its subject but how the very nature of vice has not changed through the ages, but each age has its own pestilences and its own expressions of it. Guaranteed entertainment with the bonus of appearing mildly highbrow when quoting Emerson on Schadenfreud or Plutarch on Voyerurism.