ABSTRACT
The dust-jacket of Intercourse shows a photograph of an unmade bed. White sheets lie dishevelled in deep shadow, apparently just feet away from the viewer. Across the photograph, which is not inset or bordered but printed to the edges of the jacket, white letters are reversed out of the gloom. Horizontally and vertically they frame the tousled bedding, the author's name immediately visible across the top, the title taking more time to discern, a little frisson in sidelong italics. The blurb at the foot of the front cover reads:
'The Most Shocking Book Any Feminist Has Yet Written'—Germaine Greer
On the back this tribute is repeated, along with four others containing epithets like 'uncompromising', 'forbidden', 'unflinching' and (again) 'shocking'. The coarse grained naturalism of the black and white photograph, 196low-lit and uncropped, seems to betoken the painful revelations promised within. As Mary Daly warns us, 'It strikes the main nerve of oppression in the man's world.'