Summary
The Romance of Lust is one of the most infamous and expansive works of Victorian erotica, telling the first-person story of Charlie Roberts, a young man recounting his sexual education and adventures.
Beginning with his initiation into sexuality at a young age, the novel explores a wide array of erotic scenarios, often with taboo and transgressive themes, including incest, group sex, same-sex encounters, and BDSM elements.
Told in a confessional tone, Charlie's story is not merely pornographic but also reflects the inner thoughts, moral rationalizations, and emotional justifications of a libertine immersed in a society that publicly upheld prudishness while privately indulging in erotic imagination.
The novel offers insight into the hypocrisy and duality of Victorian morality, and though it was written anonymously and distributed underground, it became a cornerstone of the era’s “forbidden literature.”