The erotic poems, stories, illustrations, and photographs in this collection showcase the vibrant underground culture devoted to erotic writing and sexual art behind the puritan veneer of
Victorian England. In London, where one in four women were involved in sexual services and 20 percent of urban buildings were used for sex clubs and brothels, authors, nobles, and members of
the royal family participated in lurid writing contests, as revealed in the examples included. This unique combination of art and erotica provides a window into the subject that the best
English artists, sculptors, and writers wrote about during this era of overt sexual repression.
