The Other Victorians by Steven Marcus

This book is an academic reading of the dark underside of Victorian sexuality. A large portion concerns publication history, a tricky question because so many of the texts that shed light on the topic were published with false names and dates or suppressed entirely. The book relies heavily on the thesis that these materials show the Victorians operated in a pre-psychological world, that is, in a time before Freud demonstrated how the mind affects our bodily impulses. The style of this book is actually quite enjoyable, perhaps because the author has such a clear grasp of and evident affection for more canonical texts; these traits enlighten his reading of the other, less well-known texts that comprise the body of his work.