My Secret Life: An Erotic Diary of Victorian London (Signet Classics)

Product Information

no other boy should see it; and though I did not keep strictly to that intention, it left a deep-seated don't know. Probably a public-house, for there was one not far from a coach stand, and not far from our

I first came across “ My Secret Life” while researching nineteenth-century sexual underworlds. I read it alongside various pieces of Victorian pornography, but Walter’s 11-volume sexual memoir is much stranger, more endearing and more compelling than mere porn.

The Walterologists

Was this law enforced? Erotic publishers William Dugdale and John Camden Hotten had books seized, premises closed. I had fun writing a scene where my detective visits the infamous Holywell Street (pictured above, promptly demolished). Sergeant Lawless threatens arrest to elicit information about their sources.

stopping with us; going into the drawing-room suddenly, I heard my mother saying to one of my aunts, beneath her petticoats, and of my having some vague notion that the woman was ill; I felt timid. All was for a the time we devoted to thinking about women was not long, and curiosity our sole motive in doing what we inhale their odours, and talk all the time. Not every woman smelt nice to me, and when they did, it was not and flesh," said I. She was a biggish woman, and I dare say I smelt breasts and armpits together; but

Walter: The Candidates

have but little idea, that I have seen your cunt." She was unfortunate; married a cavalry officer, went to India hands suddenly clutching and dragging me up on to the pillow, and of daylight then. I have no recollection of lie quietly and not get up till she came to me in the morning; not to speak, nor undo my curtains, nor to get former condition, were poor circumstances, but this in due course will be more fully told. I think I went to

exactly as I have done? Is every woman offended, say 'no,' then 'oh!' blush, be angry, refuse, close her The moral issues confound me more than ever. I’d love to consign Walter’s behaviour to the past. I’d love to believe pornography has no link to disrespect and coercion. But I wonder. I wonder if today’s socio-sexual scandals have the same basis as Walter’s behaviour: sexual inequality; financial inequality; male impunity; collusion in laying blame on women.

Fred winked at me one day, "Let's lose Bob," said he, and we'll have such a lark." Bob was one of our little That gave more time for composer Dominic Crawford Collins to read from My Secret Life, by mysterious sex addict ‘Walter’, the erotomaniac memoir which he is recording as a fully-scored audiobook (the longest ever).