My Secret Life, Complete, Volumes 1-11 by Anonymous is a candid exploration of an individual's private experiences and innermost thoughts. This intriguing compilation offers a window into the intimate and often unspoken aspects of human life. Reading My Secret Life, Complete, Volumes 1-11 is akin to embarking on a personal journey of self-discovery. This provocative and introspective series will make you ponder the complexities of human nature and the secrets we all harbor within us.
From his precocious childhood to the end of what he calls his “amatory career,” an adventurous Victorian known only as “Walter” records a breathtaking carnal epic through hundreds of sexual encounters with one or more nursemaids, prostitutes, cousins, actresses, workingmen, and other men’s wives. In ruling everything sexual within the realm of possibility, Walter reveals “varied delights…whims and fancies normal and abnormal,” sexual violence, fetishes—and sometimes, surprisingly, love. From his many escapades, he learns an invaluable lesson: “One can never know too much concerning human nature.” Portraying an era of notorious repression, in which the appearance of propriety had to be strictly maintained, My Secret Life provides a rare look at the hidden side of Victorian life: the upstairs and downstairs encounters where nothing is “proper”—or forbidden. First published in London around 1900, this landmark work freshly illuminates the complex sexual dynamics of a society strictly divided between rich and poor, male and female, sexual and chaste. In James Kincaid’s abridgment, Walter and his world come to vivid life in new and often surprising ways. Edited and with an Introduction by James Kincaid and with an Afterword by Paul Sawyer
I began these memoirs when about twenty-five years old, having from youth kept a diary of some sort, which perhaps from habit made me think of recording my inner and secret life. When I began it, I had scarcely read a baudy book, none of which excepting "Fanny Hill" appeared to me to be truthful, that did, and it does so still; the others telling of recherche eroticisms, or of inordinate copulative powers, of the strange twists, tricks, and fancies, of matured voluptuousness, and philosophical lewedness, seemed to my comparative ignorance, as baudy imaginings, or lying inventions, not worthy of belief; although I now know by experience, that they may be true enough, however eccentric, and improbable, they may appear to the uninitiated. Fanny Hill was a woman's experience. Written perhaps by a woman, where was a man's, written with equal truth? That book has no baudy word in it; but baudy acts need the baudy ejaculations; the erotic, full flavored expressions, which even the chastest indulge in, when lust, or love, is in its full tide of performance. So I determined to write my private life freely as to fact, and in the spirit of the lustful acts done by me, or witnessed; it is written therefore with absolute truth, and without any regard whatever for what the world calls decency. Decency and voluptuousness in its fullest acceptance, cannot exist together, one would kill the other; the poetry of copulation I have only experienced with a few women, which however neither prevented them, nor me from calling a spade, a spade. I began it for my amusement; when many years had been chronicled I tired of it and ceased. Some ten years afterwards I met a woman, with whom, or with those she helped me do; I did, said, saw, and heard, well nigh everything a man and woman could do with their genitals, and began to narrate those events, when quite fresh in my memory, a great variety of incidents extending over four years or more. Then I lost sight of her, and my amorous amusements for a while were simpler, but that part of my history was complete.
With several million copies sold in the last fifty years, My Secret Life, first published by Grove Press in the 1960s, is one of the most famous pornographic works in literary history. What readers of this long-banned and troubling book of violent sexual fantasies failed to realize is that it is also the confession of history’s most fiendish killer. Written during the era of Jack the Ripper, it’s narrated by “Walter,” the pseudonym of textile millionaire Henry Spencer Ashbee. Walter was a voyeur and rapist obsessed with prostitutes, and his writing revealed his darkest sexual secrets. He died in 1901, long before his book would be widely read. Only now have researchers finally come to the conclusion that “Walter” and Jack the Ripper were, in fact, one and the same. Jack the Ripper’s Secret Confession puts all the pieces together, and its new theory will amaze and titillate scholars who for generations have pondered the true identity of history’s most brutal murderer.
My Secret Life - Volumes I to III - By An Anonymous Author..... My Secret Life, by "Walter," is the memoir of a gentleman describing the author's sexual development and experiences in Victorian England. It was first published in a private edition of eleven volumes, which appeared over seven years beginning around 1888. The work itself is enormous, amounting to over one million words, the eleven original volumes amounting to over 4,000 pages. The text is repetitive and highly disorganised, but its frank discussion of sexual matters and other hidden aspects of Victorian life make it a rare and valuable social document. It has been described as "one of the strangest and most obsessive books ever written." The first edition was probably printed by Auguste Brancart, in an impression of only 25 copies. In the twentieth century My Secret Life was pirated and reprinted in a number of abridged versions that were frequently suppressed for obscenity. In 1932, for example, a New York publisher was arrested for issuing the first three volumes.
My Secret Life Volumes I to III by An Anonymous Author Or Walter. Victorian Erotica: My Secret Life, by "Walter," is the memoir of a gentleman describing the author's sexual development and experiences in Victorian England. It was first published in a private edition of eleven volumes, at the expense of the author, including an imperfect index, which appeared over seven years beginning around 1888. The work itself is enormous, amounting to over one million words, the eleven original volumes amounting to over 4,000 pages. The text is repetitive and highly disorganised, but its frank discussion of sexual matters and other hidden aspects of Victorian life make it a rare and valuable social document. According to Steven Marcus, it is virtually the only source for information on London's houses of prostitution, in which Walter spent many hours. It has been described as "one of the strangest and most obsessive books ever written." I began these memoirs when about twenty-five years old, having from youth kept a diary of some sort, which perhaps from habit made me think of recording my inner and secret life. When I began it, I had scarcely read a baudy book, none of which excepting "Fanny Hill" appeared to me to be truthful, that did, and it does so still; the others telling of recherche eroticisms, or of inordinate copulative powers, of the strange twists, tricks, and fancies, of matured voluptuousness, and philosophical lewedness, seemed to my comparative ignorance, as baudy imaginings, or lying inventions, not worthy of belief; although I now know by experience, that they may be true enough, however eccentric, and improbable, they may appear to the uninitiated. Fanny Hill was a woman's experience. Written perhaps by a woman, where was a man's, written with equal truth? That book has no baudy word in it; but baudy acts need the baudy ejaculations; the erotic, full flavored expressions, which even the chastest indulge in, when lust, or love, is in its full tide of performance. So I determined to write my private life freely as to fact, and in the spirit of the lustful acts done by me, or witnessed; it is written therefore with absolute truth, and without any regard whatever for what the world calls decency. Decency and voluptuousness in its fullest acceptance, cannot exist together, one would kill the other; the poetry of copulation I have only experienced with a few women, which however neither prevented them, nor me from calling a spade, a spade.
Suppressed regularly since its publication, My Secret Life details the erotic experiences of the narrator "Walter," a Victorian gentleman of wealth and status. Painstakingly detailed, the novel describes his incredible womanizing over several years, which includes his exploits with partners of his own stature as well as prostitutes and those of the lower class.
The author has created a portrait of Ashbee, a man who happily supported his unsuspecting wife and four children, but spent his spare time cataloguing such risque titles as Miss Bellasis Birched for Thieving and The Marchioness' Amorous Pastimes. The work includes access to Ashbee's diaries.
"The Romance of Lust - A Classic Victorian Erotic Novel" is an 1873 erotic novel of anonymous authorship. It follows the exploits of Charlie, a virile and well-endowed young man with an apparently boundless appetite for sex. He chronicles his various sexual encounters involving his sisters Eliza and Mary, his governesses, and other various male and female friends. The narrative is saturated with taboo subjects, and it almost seems that none are omitted: orgies, masturbation, lesbianism, flagellation, fellatio, cunnilingus, gay sex, anal sex, and double penetration all appear at some point. An unparalleled and a wholly satisfying reading experience, "The Romance of Lust" is a classic Victorian erotic novel not to be missed by fans and collectors of the genre. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in a modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on the history of erotic literature.
