Description

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The Victorian era, so often caricatured as an era of tight-laced moral pedants, is the period in which the following volume of erotic prose, The Romance of Lust, or Early Experiences, was published. The presumed author, William Simpson Potter, had published the work anonymously and in four volumes over the course of three years. He is thought to have sought the aid of William Lazenby, who was known in the Victorian era as a publisher of pornographic novels. The book is overt in its sexual imagery and is perhaps a bit less flowery than some of the more famous pornographic works from earlier times, such as Fanny Hill. This book, unlike some of the more accepted erotic novels, deals more with classically taboo sexual practices, such as homosexuality, incest and pedophilia. And, even if its literary merit is completely disregarded, we can at least say that it is a curiosity in an age that is otherwise associated with moral uprightness.