The Making of Victorian Sexuality

Sunday Times powerfully documented new study ... rich and challenging book


Observer astute and eye-opening study, seeks to rescue reality from myth ... probes beyond scandals ... and paints a fresh picture, drawing upon the discoveries of social historians and demographers


Literary Review admirably detailed research ... an invaluable point of reference for anyone who wants to know what really went on during the complex Victorian period ... an immensely detailed investigation of a complex subject


Publishers Weekly, 1994 a densely written and heavily footnoted treatise ... The depth of research and level of analysis presented here will be of great interest to scholars.


Daily Express Mason's book is packed with research.


John Carey, Sunday Times powerfully documented new study ... Mason treats evidence scrupulously, and gathers an immense amount of it ... no prospective pontificators about Victorianism will safely neglect this rich and challenging book.


Alain de Botton, Sunday Telegraph Mason's book is a bold contribution to a debate in danger of collapsing into a comfortable Victorians-as-repressed orthodoxy.


Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times Mason's thorough research and original arguments are to be welcomed.


Times Literary Supplement Michael Mason has made a welcome addition to the literature.


James Munson, Contemporary Review Michael Mason ... is to be congratulated on this book. The value of this book, however occasionally hidden under academic varnish, is that 'There are therefore implications for the role of reticence and restraint in our modern sexual culture.


Nicolas Buchele. The UCL Book Review ... comprehensive new study ...


Robin Lucas. Sydney Morning Herald. July '94 Mason's use of attitudes revealed in contemporary literature is always lively and engaging.


Keith Pearson, SCENE (Southwestern Ontario) August this book is an excellent work on a much maligned element of the Victorian century. This should be a must-read work for students of history and of English language alike. For sheer elegance of style and mastery of language, it is unrivalled. For depth of research and information, it is staggering and an example to historians of how to arrive at their conclusions about the Victorian or any other age, including our own. For any student of the Victorian era, this book ought to be a necessary piece of reference material.


London Review of Books the scholarly research behind them is extremely impressive. ... his arguments are carefully formulated to include ambiguities and contradictions, which are inevitable when dealing with so slippery a subject as sexual behaviour and sexual attitudes. ... these two learned and remarkable volumes reveal a wealth of 19th-century thought and behaviour. Mason has cleared the undergrowth and provided some of the materials needed for someone else to build a synthesis. In future, anyone interested in th...

Michael Mason has edited the Oxford Authors edition of William Blake (OPB, 1988), and is Wordsworth and Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads (Longman, 1992), and Trollope: Miscellaneous Essays and Reviews (Arno 1981). He lives in Oxford.

1. Locating Responsibility: i. The Alien Victorians ii. A Developing Stigma iii. The First Theory of Nineteenth-Century Respectability iv. Radical Genteelness. 2. Sex in the Society: i. Can Sexual Moralism be Detected? ii. Getting Married and Conceiving Children iii. Illegitimacy and Premarital Sex iv. Illicit Unions. 3. Codes and Classes: i. Class Structure ii. Elite and Bourgeois sexuality iii. The Growth of Working-class Respectability iv. Meanings v. The Real Victorians. 4. Carnal Knowledge: i. Doctors and Patients ii. Women's Sexuality iii. Masturbating Men iv. Celibacy versus Marriage. 5. Quantifying Sexuality: i. 'Conclusive Facts' ii. Home Truths iii. Environmentalism iv. The Case of Robert Malthus v. Carnal Knowledge. Appendix I: English Classes; Appendix II: Working-Class Housing; Appendix III: The Medical Standing of Spermatorrhea.