Introduction: New Approaches to Rape Studies in the Long Eighteenth Century

Abstract The editors review past and current scholarship on gender‐based violence in eighteenth‐century literature and culture. Moving beyond the legal implications of Lord Chief Justice Matthew Hale's claim that rape is a charge ‘easily to be made and hard to be proved’ and building upon strategies centring victims' experiences instead of perpetrators' motivations, the editors further identify the misogyny, racism, and ableism inherent in eighteenth‐century medicolegal structures and discourses. The introduction to the special issue encourages scholars to ethically consider the harms of sexual violence as represented in literature and culture while attending to the historical continuities — and discontinuities — between eighteenth‐century sexual violence and contemporary definitions of ‘rape culture’.