{"id":3785,"date":"2026-06-28T12:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T12:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=3785"},"modified":"2026-06-28T12:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T12:37:08","slug":"rare-books-on-sex-have-spiced-things-up-at-a-library-franklin-founded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=3785","title":{"rendered":"Rare books on sex have spiced things up at a library Franklin founded"},"content":{"rendered":"
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PHILADELPHIA — There is much history to celebrate on America\u2019s 250th birthday at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the oldest public rare book collection in the United States, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1731.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more For the US\u2019s 250th birthday, a German Declaration of Independence goes on show<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Now, as ever, it displays Franklin\u2019s electrostatic machine and William Penn\u2019s desk. But there\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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 \u201chow-to-run-your-sex-life books.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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