The success of two best-selling volumes of poetry published in the 18th Century was down to pornographic poems hidden in the book, an academic has suggested.
Oxford University's Dr Claudine van Hensbergen came across The Cabinet of Love in The Works of the Earls of Rochester and Roscommon.
The poems include verses on sex toys and condoms.
It is thought the printer Edmund Curll inserted the collection into the books in 1714.
"Word of it must have spread, as in the later decades of the century The Cabinet was properly integrated into the volume," Dr van Hensbergen said.
Although the existence of The Cabinet is already known, it is the first time the success of The Works has been attributed to the bawdy poems.
Continue reading on the BBC
