Description: Taking as his point of departure the authors, the audience, and the texts of Victorian writings on sex in general and of Victorian pornography in particular, Steven Marcus offers a startling and revolutionary perspective on the underside of Victorian culture
Review Quotes:
Even more startling for most people, though, will be Steven Marcus's classic "The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England". First published in 1966, it will be reissued by Transaction in September with a new introduction by the author. This is not a book to read just because Foucault alluded to it in the first volume of "The History of Sexuality", or even because Marcus was doing cultural studies well before anybody was calling it that. All duly noted, of course. But "The Other Victorians" is fascinating in its own right -- a riveting look at how Victorian smut reconciled desire and anxiety in a vision of insatiable excess that Marcus calls "pornotopia."
- Scott McLemee, "Inside Higher Ed"