Bantam pre-empts Kate Lister's 'sweeping history of female pleasure'
Bantam has pre-empted historian Kate Lister’s "sweeping history of female pleasure". Bantam pre-empted UK, Commonwealth and exclusive Europe rights to Flick: A History of Female Pleasure from Dorie Simmonds of the Dorie Simmonds Agency Ltd. Commissioning editor Sharika Teelwah will publish in May 2026.
The publisher described Flick as a rousing history of women enjoying sex: sex with themselves, sex with each other and occasionally sex with men as well.
From Ancient Mesopotamian sex goddesses to the contraceptive pill, Lister takes readers through history to "show us how women’s sexual pleasure has been controlled, understood and experienced".
Lister is an historian, columnist, television presenter and host of hit history podcast Betwixt the Sheets. She has published widely in the field of sex history and lives in the north of England.
She said: "The inspiration for this book was my deep and abiding frustration at the idea women don’t enjoy, or want, sex as much as men do. Why are we so quick to believe that women go off sex but so slow to question the kind of sex they are having? The orgasm gap is all too real and I needed to know why.
"In order to understand our own attitudes to sex, women and pleasure, we need to look to the past and see ourselves as part of an evolving story that has been told over a millennia of shame, entitlement, power and patriarchy. Equal rights means equal pleasure too."
Simmonds said: "We are thrilled that Sharika and the Transworld team will publish this important book. Kate is a powerhouse historian with a rare gift for transforming scholarship into page-turning narrative; she delivers her most compelling work yet. This is a major publishing event from one of the brightest talents in the field."
Teelwah said: "To say this book packs a punch is an understatement. It’s a raucous shakedown of all our misconceptions about female pleasure throughout history. But what surprised and moved me the most was that it left me standing shoulder to shoulder with women through the ages. Kate shows us that our ‘modern’ attitudes to sex are really a continuation of a centuries-old fight for female pleasure and bodily autonomy."
