Pleasure Bound

Victorian Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism

By: Deborah Lutz

Narrated by: Cat Gould

A smart, provocative account of the erotic current running just beneath the surface of a stuffy and stifling Victorian London.

In 1860s London, two loosely overlapping groups of bohemians - the Cannibal Club and the Aesthetes - challenged the buttoned-up Victorian propriety to promote erotic freedom and expression. Sensually attuned and politically radical, they were among the most influential thinkers and artists of the day, from Richard Burton to Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris. These iconoclasts not only navigated the fringes of sexual deviance with their bodies but also carried the pleasures of the body into their work, creating a taboo-loving counterculture whose reverberations can be felt today.

In this stunning and nuanced exposé of the Victorian London we thought we knew, Deborah Lutz takes us beyond the eyebrow-raising practices of these sex rebels, showing us how their work uncovered troubles that ran beneath the surface of the larger social fabric: the struggle for women's emancipation, the dissolution of traditional religions, and the pressing need to expand accepted forms of sexual expression.

©2011 Deborah Lutz (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Good content, horribly read

The content is very interesting, however the start stop, improper cadence of the reading makes it impossible to enjoy. I’ll buy the book and read it myself. The producer should be dismissed!

Posh & Snobby

This title deserves a read, but perhaps only if you are deeply interested in Victorian sexual history in the 1860s and 70s. The content is fresh and interesting, but the author tends to repeat herself in areas, talks down to you, and the governing thesis does not move further beyond the typical display of academic description (waffle, waffle). One big problem i had was the relationship between the prose and the performance. They combined to make the work unbearably snobby in style. Nevertheless, you're not going to find much more to listen to on Victorian sexuality.