My Secret Life - Previously Banned

Written by Tara Tainton

Saturday, 07 May 2005 00:00

All admirers of erotic literature hold a special appreciation for the historic erotica. There's something very tantalizing about those who dared to write the truth, the explicit, and the very erotic during a time that was even more conservative than we find ourselves in now. We like to know that our naughty thoughts are eternal, that we carry them from the subconsciences of our ancestors, and that we're not the only appreciators of erotica in history.

We're even more grateful for modern technology that makes that wonderful literature all the more accessible. We can sit back and enjoy a dirty read from the privacy of our home and if we're lucky, we can find something unique not commonly offered today. My Secret Life is one such book. It was written by "Walter" who may or may not have been identified as Henry Spencer Ashbee since. First published in Amsterdam between 1888 and 1894, My Secret Life was subsequently banned for the next 100 years due to its pornographic nature as a sex diary of a Victorian gentleman. It was printed at considerable cost and only the wealthiest could afford the read initially. Now, it's available online in its entirety (all 11 volumes) and of course, the contents are searchable.

A review by Maya Mirsky, considers the book "a parade of genitalia, pornographic writing of the most explicit and lascivious kind...unusual as a surviving piece of hardcore Victorian pornographic writing." So, go ahead and indulge in what your ancestors left behind for your current enjoyment. Read it chapter-by-chapter or browse entries for your favorite key words or subjects. Get your fill of cocks and cunts and even some ancient slang.

I leave you with a small excerpt from Chapter 2:

"These feelings got intensified when I thought of my aunt's backside, and the cunts of my cousins, but when I thought of the heroines, it seemed strange that such beautiful creatures should have any. The cunt which seemed to have affected my imagination was that of my aunt, which appeared more like a great parting, or division of her body, than a cunt as I then understood it; as if her buttock parting was continued round towards her belly, and as unlike the young cunts I had seen as possible. Those seemed to me but little indents. That the delicate ladies of the novels should have such divisions seemed curious, ugly, and unromantic. My sensuous temperament was developing, I saw females in all their poetry and beauty, but suppose that my physical forces had not kept pace with my brain, for I have no recollection of a cock-stand when thinking about ladies; and fucking never entered into my mind, either when I read novels or kissed women, though the pleasure I had when my lips met theirs, or touched their smooth, soft cheeks, was great. I recollect the delight it gave me perfectly. After having seen frigging, it set me reflecting, but it still seemed to me impossible, that delicate, handsome ladies, should allow pricks to be thrust up them, and nasty stuff ejected into them. I read Aristotle, tried to understand it, and thought I did, with the help of much talk with my schoolfellows; yet I only half believed it. Dogs fucking were pointed out to me; then croaks treading hens, and at last a fuller belief came.

I began then, I recollect, to think of their cunts when I kissed women, and then of my aunt's; I could not keep my eyes off of her, for thinking of her large backside and the gap between her thighs; it was the same with my cousins. Then I began to have cock-stands and suppose a pleasurable feeling about the machine, though I do not recollect that. I then found out that servants were fair game..."

Now, what could be more fun reading than that?? Take a look for yourself.

book cover my secret life by walter red
My Secret Life by Walter