Author(s): Ronald Pearsall

World History | Secondhand

This classic book on Victorian hypocrisy reveals the other side of Victoria's Britain, and what really went on behind the lace curtains and aspidistras. The author exposes, with surprisingly thorough documentation, the bald facts of sex-life (approved & illicit) among the aristocracy, the middle class and the poor in the nineteenth century. In this wide-ranging and sympathetic book Ronald Pearsall introduces the reader to Ruskin and his unconsummated marriage, Swinburne and his predilection for flagellation, the cult of the corset, the flourishing trade in pornography and obscene photographs and orgies that took place under cover at sedate country houses. 

VG.