Abstract

How were Victorian sexual attitudes formed? Michael Mason's lively and provocative study takes into account the relative contributions of evangelical religion and radical-secular ideals to the period's dominant sexual culture, and argues that to be `Victorian' about sex was in fact to be progressive, optimistic, emancipated--and hence modern. The prequel to this book, The Making of Victorian Sexuality, presented a detailed analysis of Victorian sexual behaviour. In this sequel, Michael Mason analyses the ideological context of the sexual moralism of nineteenth-century England.