The Other Victorians is a unique and
fascinating analysis of the exotic subliterature that fermented far
beneath the ‘respectable’ surface of mid-Victorian society. Making use,
for the first time, of the extensive collection of Victoriana at the
Kinsey Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, Professor
Marcus offers a startling and revolutionary perspective on the authors,
the audience and the texts of Victorian writings on sex in general and
of Victorian pornography in particular. Professor Marcus first examines
the writings of Dr William Acton, who may be said to represent the
‘official views’ of sexuality held by Victorian society, and of
Henry Spencer Ashbee, the first and most important bibliographer-scholar
of pornography. He then turns to the most significant work of its kind
from the period, the eleven-volume anonymous autobiography, My Secret
Life. There follows an analysis of four pornographic Victorian novels —
an analysis which traces their oblique but fascinating link with the
‘classics’ of Victorian literature — and a review of the odd flood of
Victorian publications devoted to flagellation. In a concluding chapter
Professor Marcus propounds a general theory of pornography as a
sociological phenomenon. The publication of The Other Victorians
provides a new and valuable understanding of this period, from both a
sociological and a literary point of view.
Steven Marcus is an Associate Professor of English at Columbia
University. He is also an Associate Editor of the well-known American
journal Partisan Review and the author of a critical study, Dickens:
From Pickwick to Dombey, and other works. |
