by Juliana Ross
This was appalling, truly appalling. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing. In my opinion it’s perfect. But I had my solicitor read it over.”
“And?”
“And once he’d recovered from his fit of the vapors, he informed me that if I were to publish it, I would certainly be prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act.”
“But after all that work—”
“All is not lost. I’m certain we will make excellent use of it in the years to come.”
Epilogue
In the House of Commons last week, the Member of Parliament for Southampton, Mr. Russell Gurney, made so bold as to raise the subject of The Married Woman’s Guide to Domestic Felicity and Contentment, which has become all the rage despite its having been banned under the Obscene Publications Act of 1857. Noting that he had, of course, not read the guide, but had heard on good authority of the utter depravity of its subject matter, Mr. Gurney begged the question of how Her Majesty’s Government could allow such a scurrilous and morally bankrupt volume to be circulated with impunity.
Responding for the Government, Her Majesty’s Home Secretary Mr. Henry Austin Bruce responded that he had little to offer by way of explanation for the book’s continued and growing popularity, but invited any and all members of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition to read said guide at their earliest convenience and report back with their findings.
It was some time before the Speaker was able to restore order to the House of Commons.
The attendant controversy has quite naturally resulted in an unprecedented demand for the infamous guide, whose author is known only as Mrs. C.R. A new shipment of copies, imported from the Netherlands, is expected to arrive in London any day.
—from the pages of London Town, October 1871
* * * * *
Author’s Note
Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, written by Isabella Beeton and published by her husband Samuel Orchard Beeton, was first published in 1861. It stretched to more than one thousand pages and featured advice on nearly every aspect of domestic life imaginable, including cookery, supervision of servants, legal matters, care of the sick, animal husbandry, and what appears to have been any other topic that caught Mrs. Beeton’s fancy. Little of the guide was original, and in fact entire passages were plagiarized from Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery for Private Families and several other sources.
Despite its faults, the Guide made—and still makes—for compelling reading. In At Home, his history of domestic life, Bill Bryson declares that the guide’s “two unimpeachable virtues were its supreme confidence and its comprehensiveness. The Victorian era was an age of anxiety, and Mrs. Beeton’s plump tome promised to guide the worried homemaker through every one of life’s foamy shoals.”
Although Isabella Beeton herself died tragically young, her book remained a bestseller for decades. If you’d like to learn more about the Guide, you can find a reproduction of the entire 1861 edition at www.mrsbeeton.com. Even better is the engrossing biography of Isabella by Kathryn Hughes: The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton, which I recommend unreservedly to anyone with an interest in Victorian social history.
As far as Victorian guides to sexuality are concerned, much has been made of Sex Tips for Wives, published in 1894, its purported author the wife of a Methodist minister. I’ve read more than a few newspaper articles that cite Sex Tips as a “typical” example of repressed Victorian attitudes toward sexuality, often quoting “While sex is at best revolting and at worse rather painful, it has to be endured.” Sex Tips is now thought, however, to have been written pseudonymously for comic effect, and cannot be relied on as reliable evidence of nineteenth-century attitudes and practices.
Fortunately, historian Fern Riddell, author of the forthcoming A Victorian Guide to Sexuality, has found examples of authentic Victorian guides to sexuality in the course of her archival research. One such guide, “The Art of Begetting Handsome Children,” dates to 1860 and is in the form of a very small pamphlet. Inside, it offers the suggestion that it may “be given at marriage instead of gloves.” It was in such underground publications that advice was more often disseminated in this period, in large part because of the restrictions of the Obscene Publications Act of 1857. The Act, which made no exceptions for artistic merit or the public good, allowed publications to be banned if any part of them were found to have the tendency “to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences,” to quote the judge who first invoked the Act in a decision. Not until 1918, with Dr. Marie Stopes’s Married Love, did any book that frankly discussed sexuality become a bestseller—and even then, Dr. Stopes’s guide was banned for nearly a quarter century in a number of countries. It was left to the more forward-thinking publishers on the Continent to publish, and then sell to foreign buyers, those books that would have surely been banned from publication in Great Britain—Caroline and Tom’s guide, I like to imagine, among them.
Read the first two erotically enthralling installments of The Improper Series, available now!
Improper Relations
When Hannah’s caught watching her late husband’s cousin debauch the maid in the library, she’s mortified—but also intrigued. An unpaid companion to his aunt, she’s used to being ignored.
The black sheep of the family, Leo has nothing but his good looks and noble birth to recommend him. Hannah ought to be appalled at what she’s witnessed, but there’s something about Leo that draws her to him.
When Leo claims he can prove that women can feel desire as passionately as men, Hannah is incredulous. Her own experiences have been uninspiring. Yet she can’t bring herself to refuse his audacious proposal when he offers to tutor her in the art of lovemaking. As the tantalizing, wicked lessons continue, she begins to fear she’s losing not just her inhibitions, but her heart as well. The poorest of relations, she has nothing to offer Leo but herself. Will it be enough when their erotic education ends?
Improper Arrangements
A reckless infatuation nearly ruined Lady Alice Cathcart-Ross in her youth, but from the moment she spies Elijah Philemon Keating scaling a rock face without a rope in sight, the man awakens her long-buried desire. Alice has come to the high Alps in search of a mountaineer, and in Elijah she finds the guide of her dreams.
Though Elijah is known as one of the greatest explorers of the age, a tragic accident has destroyed his taste for adventure and society. Elijah can’t deny his attraction to Alice, but he resolves to avoid the entanglement that could accompany it. He promises Alice one week in the Alps, and no more.
Alice agrees, valuing her independence above all else. But as the heights they climb by day are overshadowed by the summits of passion they reach at night, these vows become harder and harder to keep...
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About the Author
Juliana Ross has an abiding interest in British history that first took root during her graduate studies in England. She now lives in Canada with her husband and young children. In her spare time she cooks for family and friends, makes slow inroads into her weed patch of a garden, and reads romance novels (the steamier the better) on her eReader. Juliana is the author of The Improper Series: Improper Relations, Improper Arrangements and Improper Proposals.
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ISBN-13: 9781426898082
IMPROPER PROPOSALS
Copyright © 2014 by Juliana Ross
Edited by Deborah Nemeth
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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