Alain Corbin depicts prostitution in nineteenth-century France not as a vice, crime, or disease, but as a well-organized business. Corbin reveals how the brothel served the sex industry in the same way that the factory served manufacturing: it provided an institution for the efficient and profitable sale of services.

Alain Corbin is Professor of History at the Sorbonne.

Alan Sheridan's most recent book is Michel Foucault: The Will to Truth. He has also translated over 50 books, including works by Sartre, Lacan, and Foucault.

Read More by Alain Corbin:

• The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination
• The Village of Cannibals: Rage and Murder in France, 1870

Read More by Alan Sheridan:

• André Gide: A Life in the Present
• The Pasteurization of France
• Festivals and the French Revolution