The General’s Wife is erotica in the sense that it is Clara’s sexual journey. It is also a romance (or historical erotic romance, really), but more on that in another post.
Trapped in a loveless marriage, our heroine Clara develops a crush on a man who works with her husband. Paul Bridgers is an unlikely hero. For today’s Snippet Sunday*, I’ve chosen a passage where Clara goes out of her way to meet “Mr. Bridgers” — as she calls him — in the village near where she lives. Continue reading
In this installment of Snippet Sunday*, our heroine Clara meets our villain General Strathmore for the first time. This directly follows last week’s snippet, from The General’s Wife, which I am revising. Continue reading
In order to answer this question, we need to establish if there is indeed a question here to answer.
Uh, what?
Well, is My Secret Life an autobiography or a work of fiction? If it is a work of fiction, then trying to ascertain who Walter was is moot. If it is autobiographical, then someone (or perhaps several someones) wrote it, and, the question then becomes, who? Continue reading
This post is not about my secret life, it’s about the infamous tome published c. 1890, authored by a man known only as Walter. The book, My Secret Life, was written as a memoir and is often considered a work of Victorian erotica, which it most certainly is not. It is unabashedly an impressive work of pornography. Unlike a more famous erotic memoir, John Cleland‘s Memoirs Of A Woman Of Pleasure, aka, Fanny Hill which has a plot and a resolution (actually a happy ending), My Secret Life is more a series of vignettes. It does have the elements of fiction: There are running characters; there is development of Walter’s psyche; there is a progression of time. But it lacks any plot. Weighing in between 790 and 1173 pages (depending on the version; this one is cited), My Secret Life is the epitome of the rambling sexual memoir, a prime example of that particular style of Victorian porn. Continue reading