Misers: British Responses to Extreme Saving, 1700–1860 by Timothy Alborn (review)

he consistently tested “liberal rights” discourses, for example, against a criterion requiring “sexual liberty from legal prescription” (and of course always found those discourses wanting) (59, 85). Given that most of these writings on sexuality were not published in Bentham’s lifetime, sexual liberty could only function for Bentham as a private test for the utility of government in providing for the happiness of people, but this is a test which has, arguably, proved its worth in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In any case, Shanafelt’s book makes a good case for re-centering the study of Bentham’s moral and political philosophy on sexuality, which can no longer be understood as a merely peripheral concern for him. In this respect, the book makes an important contribution to the discussion of the reception of Bentham, and later reception studies may well understand this early twenty-first century period of the publication of the writings on sexuality as marking a significant shift in that reception.