Sex Obsessed Victorians

My sincere thanks to Ms Gloria Brame for pointing out Sex, porn and a discreet taste for the bizarre: With 6,000 brothels and 80,000 prostitutes in London, sex was an 1857 obsession. John Sutherland charts expression and repression of the dirty-book trade of the day.

With lots of information packed into a relatively short article, this is my favorite quote:

Pornography, whether in 1857 or 2007, is one of many useful litmus papers for determining what strange mixtures are at work culturally. The Victorians were not prudish, nor are we enlightened. Different times, different porn.

Image of Victorian nude bookplate via Deco Dog.