The Worm in the Bud: The World of Victorian Sexuality"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. Ronald Pearsall exposes, with thorough documentation, the bald facts of sex-life (approved and illicit) among the aristocracy, the middle class and poor in the nineteenth century. His curious record is honest, entertaining, and very humorous. It also reflects the conflicting values of the Victorian double standard - one is the very image of respectability, the other is an underground world in which repressions sought their outlet in depravity and licentiousness. In this 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."--BOOK JACKET. |
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adultery Albert Annie Besant asked beautiful behaviour Boulton boys British brothel child Church corset court courtship Coventry Patmore curious daughter death diary disease divorce doctors doubt dreams dress Edward Carpenter Ellis England English erotic Eton eyes female figure flagellation girls Gladstone hair Havelock Ellis homosexual humour husband indecent Journal journalist kind kiss Lady letters Lillie Langtry lived London looked Lord Euston marriage married menstruation ment middle classes Miss moral mother music hall never night nineteenth century nude obscene Oscar Wilde Oxford Pall Mall Gazette Park passion Patmore period person play police poor pornography pretty Prince of Wales prostitutes Queen Queen Victoria rape respectable Rossetti Royal Ruskin sexual shillings society Stead Street Swinburne syphilis thing thought tion took verse Victorian wanted wedding whore wife woman women word writers wrote young