Sex has always sold

The BBC reports that a scholar is now attributing the success of the poetry of the Earl of Rochester to the scandalous sex poems included in his work. Apparently, the original publications of his poetry did not properly include the raunchier poems, but they were inserted (pun intended) by the printer, and years later they were properly collected in the books:

Dr. van Hensbergen found the collection while cataloguing an online index of poetic miscellanies for Oxford University.

"The Cabinet is unusual because it shows us that people read pornographic writing directly alongside the verse of major poets," she said.

"This raises interesting questions about what counts as literature and where the boundaries between high and low culture lie."

Surprise! People have been interested in sex for a long time!