The Illustrated Book of Queen Victoria's Secrets

A fascinating insight into the sex life of the Victorians

This pocket-sized bombshell simply explodes with more than ninety images of Victorian debauchery mostly never seen before. With an elegant, but delicously dirty, text by Christopher Hart that investigates every nook and cranny of the pulsating underbelly of that proud, upstanding era (including VR herself), pornography, adultery, brothels, 'self-pollution' as well as sex between classes, between races - even occasionally between the sheets.

Queen Victoria's Secrets draws heavily on a recently discovered collection of highly erotic 19th century prints and drawings. Dr. Hart's text is an informed yet highly entertaining survey: a perfect foil to the deliciously sexy images.

Toff sex: the Guards officer shown into a Mayfair brothel only to find, perched upon the bed, his own sister.

The Daily Telegraph (1857) fulminates:

'young girls furtively peeping into sin-crammed windows... guiltily bending over engravings as vile in execution as they are in subject.'

Prurience that would make even a tabloid reader's eyes water...

As we all suspected... beneath the veneer of middle class respectability lurked a heaving mass of juvenile prostitutes, depraved gentlemen, adulterous ladies and stifling bourgeois hypocrisy. And if that all sounds rather similar to today, these two books will give you a fascinating glimpse of how very modern and sophisticated the late Victorians were, sexually speaking. In fact, what seems new and risqué today would have held few surprises for our forefathers - and -mothers.

On Victoria's marriage to Prince Albert, two 'Gents':

1st Gent - So, Albert goes with the Queen to Windsor after the ceremony?
2nd Gent - He'll go further before morning.
1st Gent - How so?
2nd Gent - Why, he'll go in at Bushy, pass Virginia Water, on through Maidenhead and leave Staines behind.