22:
171:, presumably weaving fantasy and anecdotes from friends in with his own real-life experiences. If Ashbee was not the actual author, it is suggested that he may well have been the compiler of the work's lengthy, detailed, and very imperfect index, and have provided other editorial assistance and help in getting the book into print.
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The work itself is enormous, amounting to over one million words, the eleven original volumes amounting to over 4,000 pages. The text is repetitive and highly disorganised, and the literary quality is negligible, but its frank discussion of sexual matters and other hidden aspects of
Victorian life
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The question of how much the book is a record of true experiences (whether of Ashbee or another writer), and how much is fiction or erotic fantasy can probably never be fully resolved. However, the presence of much mundane detail, the writer's inclusion of incidents that do him little personal
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women. This would appear to reflect the realities of his time. Internal evidence from the book suggests that "Walter" was born between 1820 and 1825. In the last volume he notes seeing the books through print, which indicates that he was still alive in the 1890s.
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as the most likely candidate, the known facts of whose life best coincide with the internal evidence of the work. "Walter" claimed to be a close friend of the barrister in a famous case of the time, which they identify as the case of
100:, but in 1969 a British printer, Arthur Dobson, was sentenced to two years' prison for producing a UK reprint. It was not until 1995 that the work in its entirety was published openly in the UK, by Arrow Books.
244:(1821–1894), who was Surveyor and Engineer to the City of London Commissioners of Sewers was suggested by John Patrick Pattinson in 2002 after extensive research.
258:) lend it considerable credibility. In spite of "Walter's" obsessive womanising over a period of several decades, only a few of his partners are of his own
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was the first to link "Walter" and Ashbee, in his introduction to the 1962 reprints of Ashbee's bibliographies, and the 1966 Grove Press edition of
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was pirated and reprinted in a number of abridged versions that were frequently suppressed for obscenity. In 1932, for example, a
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182:(1966), concluded that the balance of known facts was against Legman's "shrewd and ingenious guess". Also unconvinced were
70:, in which Walter spent many hours. It has been described as "one of the strangest and most obsessive books ever written".
208:. Grimley is sceptical of Ashbee's candidacy as the main author. According to Ashbee, Potter was involved in authoring
204:(1805–1879), a known associate of Ashbee, was put forward by Gordon Grimley in his introduction to the 1972 edition of
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The identity of "Walter" is unknown. There is no scholarly consensus in favour of any of the candidates proposed.
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For an analysis of the original edition's production and Walter's methods of composition, see Steven Marcus,
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included an expanded version of that essay. Ashbee was also identified as Walter by a May 2000
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The Other
Victorians: a Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England
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The Other
Victorians: a Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England
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A number of other men have been suggested as more likely to be the author, including:
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credit, and the lack of intrinsically improbable circumstances (in contrast to most
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in 1854. That barrister, William
Overend QC, was a childhood friend of Stanley.
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354:. Facts on File library of world history. Infobase Publishing. p.
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In the USA it was finally published without censorship in 1966 by
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583:(first 3 volumes only, downloadable in various eBook formats)
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publisher was arrested for issuing the first three volumes.
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The
Erotomaniac: The Secret Life of Henry Spencer Ashbee
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Green, Jonathon; Karolides, Nicholas J., eds. (2005).
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Archive of text removed from
Project Gutenberg #30360
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Walter: The Secret Life of a
Victorian Pornographer
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459:. London: Granada Publishing, 1972; pp. 7-17
570:. 285 pages. London: Faber and Faber, 2001
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297:The Longman companion to Victorian fiction
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536:. New York: Basic Books, 1964; pp. 78-88
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42:of a gentleman describing the author's
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469:Pattinson, John Patrick (March 2002).
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111:The most commonly suggested author is
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559:Kronhausen, Eberhard & Phyllis,
481:. Cambridge Journals Online: 19–40.
563:. 512 pages. Ballantine Books, 1967
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16:Erotic memoir published from 1888
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184:Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen
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295:Sutherland, John, ed. (2009).
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561:Walter: The English Casanova
457:My Secret Life; Introduction
379:Kearney, Patrick J. (1982).
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62:make it a rare and valuable
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520:, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 19-40
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186:in their detailed study of
143:documentary on British TV,
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332:Patrick J. Kearney (1982)
167:arguing that Ashbee wrote
487:10.1017/S1060150302301025
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407:Bullough, Vern L (2000).
383:. Parragon. p. 126.
262:. The great majority are
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
