"Good news, Augustus," my mother exclaimed upon reading the message she'd just received from a friend in Dieppe. "Your father has escaped France in safety." We hugged each other, overjoyed to know that he'd avoided the inevitable fate, which, as an aristocrat, would have befallen him at the hands of the purging Republicans. Then a look of distress crossed her face. "But until we get news from England to enable us to join him there, I hardly know where we can look for refuge. I suppose we're guaranteed a temporary home, for my younger sister, Agatha, is Abbess of the convent of St. Claire, but now there is talk of suppressing convents and priests altogether. My other fear pertains to you, my dear boy," she said, wringing her hands. "Taking refuge and protecting you from danger is one thing; but how to smuggle you, a young boy of seventeen, into a convent full of young nuns is a perfect puzzle to me." "Nonsense, Mother!" I exclaimed. "Before the convents are suppressed, we'll be in safety in England, and as for getting me snugly into the convent, we're about the same height and resemble one another, so you must dress me up the best way you can and introduce me as your sister, or niece, or friend, or something or other." "You are impudent for imagining any such idea," replied my mother, laughing, "but you forget one thing. It will be impossible to deceive my sister, Agatha." "Try, anyway," I said, "and if the worst comes to the worst, we must let her into our secret and trust to her kindness." "Your plan is bold, if not rash, but as I can't think of anything else, we'll try it," she agreed with some misgivings. "Let me see," she continued in a musing tone, "I'll present you as the niece of your father's wife, but even then Agatha may have her suspicions, but we'll risk it." She wagged a finger at me. "Mind you don't look so bold, and stride so wide in your walk as you usually do, and I'll dress you suitably tomorrow morning." I shook my head. "We don't know what may happen this afternoon or tomorrow morning.

A young man dresses up as a woman and enters a convent in this classic, sexy, and funny novel about some very sinful and naughty nuns. Before internet porn, before porn videos, before porn movies, people lusting for raunchy, X-rated entertainment read pornographic books and magazines. Victorian and Edwardian England had its own adult entertainment industry - countless erotic novels were put out by shady publishers, some books were printed by the authors themselves, and most of the writers were anonymous. Many of these 19th century books are surprisingly kinky, and some of them may be quite offensive to modern day readers - in more ways than one. First published in 1866, "The Nunnery Tales" is one of the very first nunsploitation novels. Its anonymous author is unknown, but this may be a translation of a novel first published in French.

The Queen of Regency Romance, bestselling author Georgette Heyer, charms readers with this delightful romp of mistaken identity. A missing twin Something is very wrong, and the Honourable Christopher "Kit" Fancot can sense it. Kit returns to London on leave from the diplomatic service to find that his twin brother Evelyn has disappeared and his extravagant mother's debts have mounted alarmingly. A quick-minded heiress The Fancot family's fortunes are riding on Evelyn's marriage to the self-possessed Cressy Stavely, and her formidable grandmother's approval of the match. If Evelyn fails to meet the Dowager Lady Stavely in a few days as planned, the betrothal could be off. A fortune in the balance When the incorrigible Lady Fancot persuades her son to impersonate his twin (just for one night, she promises) the masquerade sets off a tangled sequence of events that engage Kit's heart far more deeply than he'd ever anticipated with his brother's fiancée—who might know much more about what's going on than she cares to reveal... Praise for Georgette Heyer: "A writer of great wit and style... I've read her books to ragged shreds."—Kate Fenton, Daily Telegraph "Reading Georgette Heyer is the next best thing to reading Jane Austen."—Publishers Weekly

The Gothic Ideology argues that in order to modernize and secularize, the British Protestant imaginary needed an 'other' against which it could define itself as a culture and a nation with distinct boundaries. The 'Gothic ideology' is identified as an intense religious anxiety, produced by the aftershocks of the Protestant reformation, the Catholic Counter-Reformation, and the dynastic upheavals produced by both events in England, Germany, and France, and was played out in hundreds of Gothic texts published throughout Europe between the mid-eighteenth century and 1880. This book is the first to read the Gothic ideology through the historical context of both King Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries and the extensive French anti-clerical and pornographic works that were well-known to Horace Walpole and Matthew Lewis. The book argues that Gothic was thoroughly invested in a crude form of anti-Catholicism that fed lower class prejudices against the passage of a variety of Catholic Relief Acts that had been pending in Parliament since 1788 and finally passed in 1829.

Underworld: n. 1. the part of society comprising those who live by organized crime and immorality. 2. the mythical abode of the dead under the earth. Take a walk on the dark side of the street in this unique exploration of the fears and desires at the heart of the British Empire, from the Regency dandy’s playground to the grim and gothic labyrinths of the Victorian city. Enter a world of gin spinners, sneaksmen and Covent Garden nuns, where bare-knuckled boxers slog it out for dozens of rounds, children are worth more dead than alive, and the Thames holds more bodies than the Ganges. This is the Modern Babylon, a place of brutal poverty, violent crime, strong drink, pornography and prostitution; of low neighborhoods and crooked houses with windows out like broken teeth, wraithlike urchins with haunted eyes, desperate, ruthless and vicious men, and the broken remnants of once fine girls: a grey, bleak, infernal place, where gaslights fail to pierce the pestilential fog, and coppers travel in pairs, if they venture there at all. Combining the accessibility of a popular history with original research, this book brings the denizens of this vanished world once more to life, along with the voices of those who sought to exploit, imprison or save them, or to simply report back from this alien landscape that both fascinated and appalled: the politicians, the reformers, the journalists and, above all, the storytellers, from literary novelists to purveyors of penny dreadfuls. Welcome to the 19th century underworld…

The present work fills a gap as it attempts to offer a history of erotic literature published in the United Kingdom. The word Study in the title is perhaps a bit exaggerated as the material is largely taken from the now well known bibliographies by Pisanus Fraxi (Henry Spencer Ashbee) and quotations from the books themselves. The time line is WW II. Who was the author? He may have been Charles Reginald Dawes (1879-1964) who is supposed to have written (but not published) a text of this or a similar title. His profession or his activities are not known - he once called himself a writer but library catalogues credit him only with two publications: The Marquis de Sade (Paris 1927) and Retif de la Bretonne (London 1946, privately printed). He may have been a popular writer under pseudonyms, though. Dawes owned a good erotica collection which he willed to the British Museum Library; that would explain why the author of this Study - if he was Dawes - could quote freely from erotic texts which only few of his contemporaries would have had available. The main merits of this book are that the author was thoroughly familiar with English (and French) erotic literature and that he put his material in chronological order and in context. The editor added a number of references, illustrations and indices of personal names and titles to facilitate navigation.

In order to escape the Republican purges of revolutionary France, Augustus and his mother must take refuge in his Aunt's nunnery, the Convent of St. Claire. Dressed to deceive and going by the name of 'Augustine' he soon bears witness to the most lascivious acts of chastisement at the hands of one lusty Father Eustace upon one young, lithe, and eager Sister Emilie. What follows is a thoroughly mischievous frolic from one nun to another, all willing to be so educated in the sins of the flesh by the pretender in their midst, and suffer the resulting penitence at the tip of a rod... and a rod. This absolutely delicious example of renaissance erotica, anonymously written in 1866 and published by the notorious William Dugdale, will excite, shock, and titillate in equal measure. A must have for any collection of once-banned and forbidden literature.

Women in Victorian England wore jewelry made from each other's hair and wrote poems celebrating decades of friendship. They pored over magazines that described the dangerous pleasures of corporal punishment. A few had sexual relationships with each other, exchanged rings and vows, willed each other property, and lived together in long-term partnerships described as marriages. But, as Sharon Marcus shows, these women were not seen as gender outlaws. Their desires were fanned by consumer culture, and their friendships and unions were accepted and even encouraged by family, society, and church. Far from being sexless angels defined only by male desires, Victorian women openly enjoyed looking at and even dominating other women. Their friendships helped realize the ideal of companionate love between men and women celebrated by novels, and their unions influenced politicians and social thinkers to reform marriage law. Through a close examination of literature, memoirs, letters, domestic magazines, and political debates, Marcus reveals how relationships between women were a crucial component of femininity. Deeply researched, powerfully argued, and filled with original readings of familiar and surprising sources, Between Women overturns everything we thought we knew about Victorian women and the history of marriage and family life. It offers a new paradigm for theorizing gender and sexuality--not just in the Victorian period, but in our own.