When we think of the Victorian era, it is often as a time of prudish and proper behavior. A time when sex was never spoken of in polite society, and when “proper” gentlemen and ladies engaged in such practices as little as possible.

Many books of the time gave advice like this to young wives: “If he lifts your gown and attempts to kiss you any place else, quickly pull the gown back in place, spring from the bed, and announce that nature calls you to the toilet”.

This kind of advice may have been given lip service, but in private, things seemed to be very different, at least with some of that period. Quite a few of the best and most sexually explicit books ever written come from this era. Books like Fanny Hill and The Romance of Lust. These were usually distributed "underground". 

In this book, written entirely in letters, we meet a young Victorian couple who are, at least in the beginning, profoundly ignorant of anything to do with sex. Then they meet a “woman with experience”, and their sexual education begins. They are soon awakened to their amorous longings and describe exactly how that happens in a series of letters. This book is for adults only, since the descriptions describe a wide variety of sexual activities very explicitly. Like many books of Victorian erotica, this book is a fascinating look at the “other side” of the Victorian era.