Richard Phillips lectures in Geography at Salford University. His publications include Mapping Men and Empire: A Geography of Adventure (1997). David Shuttleton lectures in English and Film at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He has published on eighteenth-century and modern literature, and is the author of Queer Pastoral: Nature, Homosexuality and Modernity. Diane Watt is senior lecturer in English at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. She has published an edited collection and a book, both about women's writing and history. She has also written a number of articles about gender and sexuality, and contributed to Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender and Sexuality (1997).

PART I Non-metropolitan sexualities , 1 The production of gay and the return of power 2 Marginality on the tropic 3 Region, religion and sexuality: pilgrim through this barren land 4 Margins of the city: towards a dialectic of suburban desire PART II Beyond the metropolis 5 Eroticizing the rural 6 Imagined geographies and sexuality politics: the city, the country and the age of consent 7 The queer politics of gay pastoral 8 Skirting the margins: Anne Lister, self-representation and lesbian identity in early nineteenth-century Yorkshire PART III Deconstructing metropolitan models 9 Marginalization and resistance: lesbians in Mexico 10 Remapping same-sex desire: queer writing and culture in the American heartland 11 Getting your kicks on Route 66!: stories of gay and lesbian life in rural America, c. 1950-1970s 12 Mapping decolonization of male homoerotic space in Pacific Canada PART IV Devolving sexualities 13 Devolutionary desires 14 On the borders of allegiance: identity politics in Ulster 15 Transgression in Glasgow: a poet coming to terms

This book of critical rural geography breaks new ground by drawing attention to sex and sexualities outside the metropolis. It explores sexualities and sexual experiences in a variety of rural and marginal spaces with international contributions from a wide range of disciplines. These include: literary and cultural studies, lesbian and gay studies, geography, history and law. Among the topics uncovered are:
* a lesbian in rural England
* sexual life in rural Wales
* sexuality in rural South Africa
* scandal in the American South: sex, race and politics
* nature and homosexuality in literature
* Derry/Londonderry as a sexual space
* how 'country folk' are sexualised in popular culture.