Did Edwardian ladies get hot?

[taytay4eva]

You can actually buy it on Amazon, and it violates so many of their Erotic rules, it makes me want to sue their asses. LOL

It's classic literature, it's allowed to break a couple rules here and there

 

[MillieDynamite]

Yeah, like nearly all of Amazon's Banable offenses are fractured beyond recognition.

It's classic literature, it's allowed to break a couple rules here and there

 

[LargoKitt]

Also: not the Edwardian period. Regency and/or Victorian era.

Thanks, I was spritzing.

 

[LargoKitt]

The Romance of Lust by Anonymous, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, by Henry Fielding, The Sins of the Cities of the Plain, by Jack Saul, The Power of Mesmerism: A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies, by Anonymous, Les Bijoux Indiscrets, OR The Indiscreet Toys, by Denis Diderot, The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival by Anonomyous, but wait there's more: the Pearl, a dirty magazine and others.

Guess I'll have to delve a little. I remain curious about how much these depict women's own sexuality. That said, a sex worker or courtesan might be 'in the business of delivering sex mostly to men' but still might be happier in her own sexuality than the average corseted lady of the manor or bourgeois dame.

 

[LargoKitt]

I do hope you're not planning to write romantasy!

The Edwardian period was the beginning of the twentieth century, just prior to the First World War. The writers you cite are from a century before, the beginning of the nineteenth century (the Regency period). Crinoline was more a fashion statement in the mid to late 1800s. Regency fashion was very adorable high-breasted smocks. There's many an etching of ladies with perky nipples not quite revealed!

Lady Chatterley was first published in 1928.

You might want to brush up on your erotic timelines .

Yer right. I just spun it out without checking. One needs remember, for instance, that Benjamin Franklin, Mr. Early To Bed, was a favorite of the French ladies in the 1770s, and they had a reputation for loving a bit of slap and tickle.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Yer right. I just spun it out without checking. One needs remember, for instance, that Benjamin Franklin, Mr. Early To Bed, was a favorite of the French ladies in the 1770s, and they had a reputation for loving a bit of slap and tickle.

I doubt that the attitudes and mores of the social elites were any more representative of the overall population than those of the sex workers. If you are only writing about the aristocracy, the examples you can find in literary sources are going to have more veracity than if you are writing the common people.

 

[Zootonius]

You can actually buy it on Amazon, and it violates so many of their Erotic rules, it makes me want to sue their asses. LOL

And it is at Project Gutenberg
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30254

 

[BellaBestia]

2 favorites: The Way of a Man with a Maid, and The Pearl.

Currently reading Th Way… very nice

 

[Zootonius]

Another product of the Victorian era is My Secret Life, while is more diary (in 11 volumes) than literature. As Wikipedia points out,

"...the literary quality is negligible, but its frank discussion of sexual matters and other hidden aspects of Victorian life make it a rare and valuable social document."

If only there was a Cliff Notes version.

 

[LargoKitt]

I doubt that the attitudes and mores of the social elites were any more representative of the overall population than those of the sex workers. If you are only writing about the aristocracy, the examples you can find in literary sources are going to have more veracity than if you are writing the common people.

I'm curious how fluid the actual relations among the classes in 16-19th C Britain, or France, or Germany were. Certainly there was a good deal of nonconsentual mingling between upstairs and downstairs, and then the slipping around folks did in 'big houses' everywhere; nobless oblige, and visits to town, or 'the Continent' for a bit of R&R. Shakespeare is said to have shared a mistress with the Lord Chamberlain who was Mary Boleyn's son. Emilia Lanier was a musician's daughter and a consummate poet. (There's the irony that the British royal family gets huffy when they misbehave, when generations have made an art of it.)

 

[MillieDynamite]

Where do you think I got my copy? Gutenberg doesn't give a shit about the rules of polite society.

And it is at Project Gutenberg
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30254