VOLUME EIGHT CHAPTER 10

A light-haired Irish bitch. • Foul-tongued and hotarsed. • Recondite expressions. • "D'ye loike me." • Her bolt from Dublin. • Baggage detained. • A suspicious tale. • My regrets at losing Sarah. • Camille revisited. • Her brothel venture. • About sodomites and catamites. • Buggers' sphincters. • Her friend's catamitic tastes. • Sodomy cum gamahuche. • Lolotte the young Belgain. • On the qualities of different cunts. • Lolotte's gamahuche. • Reflexions on the change in my erotic tastes. • An artist in lewedness. • French, fat, white-skinned, red-haired and thirty-five. • Refined ministrations. • Anal fingering. • A sphincter dilated. • Lingual delicacies. • Kid gloves and cold cream. • The curious chair. • Erotic suggestions. • Dildo buggery. • A second harlot • two pleasures at once. • Anus and pudenda in simultaneous action.

My Secret Life is an anonymously penned memoir written during a period from the 1840s to the 1880s by a wealthy and sex obsessed English gentleman who refers to himself simply as ‘Walter’. Part confessional, part investigative erotic journalism, it meticulously documents every detail of the author’s prolific sexual encounters, offering us in the process an eye and thigh opening account of life behind closed doors in the Victorian age.

Women, in both mind and body, were the all consuming object of Walter’s interest. From early youth through to old age his quest for erotic discovery and adventure with them was never diminished.

Unlike contemporary 19th century erotic texts, such as The Pearl, whose sole object was to titillate, Walter’s interest in his subjects did not end with the extinguishing of the carnal flame. His hunger to understand the circumstances and minds of the women he encountered is never upstaged by the sex. Their potted life histories, their most intimate desires and acts were shared with him and in turn meticulously recorded by him, written down verbatim while still fresh in his mind.

The resulting poignant record of a lost era and the intimate moments of the women who inhabited it offer us a remarkable insight into the 19th century that cannot be gleaned from any other source.

The complete unabridged text is being released as a fully scored audiofilm (an audio book with accompanying music soundtrack) by film composer Dominic Crawford Collins.