My Secret Life: An Erotic Diary of Victorian London

Rating:
Summary: An excellent read, despite the opinion of some
Review: ..."Hey, it's only a *book*. Lighten up!"
Yes, if I was sitting in a bar and a man sat down beside me, and began revealing in great detail his sexual exploits, ones very much like those in this book, involving at times non consensual sex with minors and bestiality, I would consider him a revolting individual.
But this is a work of *fiction*. A different set of judgments must be applied to events and people, I feel, when they exist only between the covers of a work of literature. The attitude of people like this reader from Boston, who seem as much offended by fictional atrocities as they are by real ones, is the sort of attitude and mentality that leads to rampant censorship.
I myself have never found a book itself revolting, even if it describes things that can be seen by some as revolting. Literature is to be celebrated and protected, and included in that protection must be everything from a book as innocuous as "The Little Engine that Could" to "Mien Kamph" and even works more controversial than that.
That said, I would like to add that I found this book at times highly disturbing, which I think I've made clear doesn't negate it in my eyes as a worthwhile piece of literature. The book " Diary of a Rapist" by Evan S. Connell, for example, is extremely disturbing, but one of the best books I've ever read. I highly recommend it.
I also found "My Secret Life" extremely erotic, so much so that at times I had to open a window because I found the room to have suddenly gotten a bit warm!
So purchase this book, hopefully keeping more of an open mind than some of the others who have read it.

Rating:
Summary: For Collectors
Review: I have read this book, thinking that the whole erotical experience of the victorian era will be classy and romantic, instead you get to read about an old guy trying ot make love to everyting that has two legs. Its not as hot as it looks to be. wors ten bucks ive spent ever. Marquis the sade on the other hand is quite brilliant!

Rating:
Summary: Not Just Sexy
Review: I'm not sure where to start. I suppose I would like to respond to another review, in which the author stated that this book begins with tales of sexual abuse. Perhaps my understanding og sexual abuse is limited, but when i read the opening chapters, I felt as if this "Walter" was simply purging his early memories of "all things sexual" as he states.

My Secret Life is presented as a memoir, though the editor James Kinkaid lets readers know that this may not be true. Nevertheless, this Victorian volume is amazing. Kinkaid supposes that this book has more "encounters" than any other in history- I do not doubt it. There is some questionable behavior, but it must all be put into context and understood from a distance. All in all, I have found "Walter" charming and endearing. He struggles with conflict between his inner desires and societal pressure.

This book is full of sex: sex acts, sex talk, and detailed descriptions of body parts. However, I find it also fascinatilngly honest.

Rating:
Summary: Mediocre.
Review: There are, presumably, two possible reasons for reading this book. By far the most common, I'm sure, is for prurient interest; in this the book mostly fails. The entire book is basically nothing more than a description of incident after incident of sex or sexplay, but while there are a few erotic scenes in it, for the most part, the sex scenes are so repetitiously described, and so blandly described, that they are actually rather boring. As erotica this book is not very good.

The second possible reason for reading this book is for the
historical insight it provides into the sexual attitudes in Victorian London, and how those attitudes played out in practice, rather than in theory. In this regard, the book is rather more successful. One thing that struck me was the confirmation it gave of the damage that is done by a sexually repressive society; in such a society, anyone who is having sex outside of marriage at all is an outlaw, already committing an act that is totally condemned by the society in which they live. As such, they are less likely to be overly particular as to just HOW they break the societal taboos; if even masturbation is unspeakably vile, then sex itself isn't much worse. And since no "good" girl will ADMIT to wanting sex, one becomes accustomed to overcoming a certain amount of resistance, so when dealing with someone who really DOESN'T consent, one can't tell the difference. And once one is accustomed to having women without tacit consent, how much of a step is it to child-rape? If everything sexual all the way down to masturbation is absolutely, totally, vehemently forbidden, it is impossible to make distinctions of degree, and once a young man takes that first step, he's already totally lost, so there are no longer any barriers at all. Similarly, once a young woman takes that first step, she may as well become a prostitute, for the one is not noticeably worse than the other.

This is the mind-set we see narrating this book. It's an interesting glimpse, but the book as a whole is rather boring and repetitive. Read a couple of chapters, and you've pretty well read the whole thing; there's no need to go further.

Rating:
Summary: The fascination of 'My Secret Life'
Review: This book--this edition is much abridged but it is hard to find in print the unabridged edition, which runs to several volumes --is a fascinating and in-depth look at Victorian lower class prostitutes and their upper class client base.The anonymous author, a decidedly upper class gentleman apparently went through at least three fortunes which underwrote his obsessive need for paid sex, which lasted from his teenage until his death which seems to have occurred sometime in his 60's or perhaps a bit later. Internal clues are few, and some of what is thought to be known about him is based on the assumption that he was Henry Spencer Ashbee, a director of the Ashmolean museum and a writer on the fine arts. But the truth is we do not know who Anonymous really was. He takes the name 'Walter' when he mentions himself, but often disguises the prosutitutes' names as well, and also the names of the bordellos he favors. some of which are upscale and expensive. However his disguises are transparent and anybody with a little creativity can penetrate them.
What Walter did was something like what Casanova did before him, write an account of his amours. But unlike Casanova, Walter wrote only about his sexual life, ignoring absolutely everything else. And also unlike Casanova, who reconstructed his life from memory in his old age, Walter kept a daily journal, making his disclosures infinitely more immediate, circumstantial, and realistic. He quotes at great length his lewd dialogues with his whores of choice, often enough not whores at all--yet--but servant girls tempted by his offers of large sums of money to 'let him have a little poke.'He particularly loved to get hold of virgins, but liked his women of all ages, nationalities, (he spoke several European languages) body types, dispositions, hair colors, length of pubic hair and even smells. He could be aroused sometimes by an odor that at other times would repulse him, plunge into sexually promising situations in the very roughest parts of town without thinking twice, pay what to us would seem outrageous prices when he was absolutely determined to have his way, and record it all in clear, simple prose, from a somewhat detached point of view, which made clear that he had little or no feeling for these women as human beings, but took the Victorian upper class view, that they were simply unfortunates, that his paying them was a great benefit to them for which they should be grateful, and that their welfare or happiness beyond that had nothing to do with him. A modern writer, in introducing one of the editions of this book--not this one--believed Walter suffered from satyriasis, the obsessive, compulsive need to have sexual intercourse.Indeed he had prodigious desires and sexual bouts, in which he would have repeated connections with one or more whores over as long as a three day period. And he could and did go 'spoony' on a particular woman, and want only her for a week, a month or more, before getting his fill of her and moving on. He seemed to both love and hate the fact that whores lied as a matter of course,(as they always have and always will, for their own good reasons) and fancied himself able to unmask their schemes and see through to what he imagined was the truth.
This is not a book of uncomplcated pornography, but rather a fascinating study of a very unusual man and a well fleshed out picture of the particular underclass, from 1850's to 1890's London, with whom he preferred to spend his entire life. I give it four stars instead of five because it is abridged. But the truth is that there are no other sexual autobiographies I know about that are as long, as unselfconscious, as descriptive and thorough as this one. A completely unique and rewarding piece of sexual Victoriana.

Rating:
Summary: Sad but historically important
Review: This is supposedly the memoir of a Victorian-era man who documents his sexual exploits. Whether it is true we may never know. The version for sale here may not be the unabridged version and may differ from the version I read. The version that I read began with a chapter describing the ways in which the narrator was repeatedly sexually abused and molested as a child. In later chapters he goes on to become a sex addict. Of course, in Victorian England they were not aware of child abuse and its lasting repercussions as we are today. Similarly, sex addition and sexually compulsive behavior are only beginning to be understood today. This book is an important work in the history of literature, but not good reading today. Stay away, particularly if you are a survivor of sexual abuse.

Rating:
Summary: sexual autobiography
Review: This is the most interesting, and perhaps the only "sexual autobiography" in existence. The incidents and just the narrative in general don't read like your typical erotic fiction from this era. However, the language and words used are consistent with this being written in Victorian times. Even rare Victorian sexual terms like "letch" and "gamahuche" are used. I'm convinced that the things in this book actually happened. This work is invaluable in helping us understand the social and sexual underworld of those times through the eyes of a real-life upper-class erotomaniac named "Walter." It has also primarily been enjoyed as a classic work of erotica for its many descriptions and depictions of sexual activity.(...)