The making of Victorian sexual attitudes

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.

Michael Mason has edited the Oxford Authors edition of William Blake (OPB, 1988), and is Wordsworth and Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads (Longman, 1992), and Trollope: Miscellaneous Essays and Reviews (Arno 1981). He lives in Oxford.