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My Secret Life – The Complete Volumes 1–11


First known cover of Volume 1

First known cover
Vol 1 – 1888

Banned for over eighty years in the west and still illegal in Kyrgyzstan, the anonymously written My Secret Life is as scandalous now as it was when first published in the 1880's. Edited and compiled into eleven volumes years after the author had died and decades after the diary had had its last entry, the sexual escapades of Walter, a privileged London gentleman is nothing less than astonishing.

In raw descriptive accounts of a personal obsession with women, Walter takes us with him on his travels through the "baudy houses" of the slums, to musty European bars and to the servant quarters of friends and relatives (whilst not neglecting the company of those friends and relatives along the way); My Secret Life is a rare insight into the lives of peoples from opposite worlds. Walter fills in the gaps that Dickens left out and leaves us a rich understanding of the dreams and reality of Victorian Britain.


Originally only available to private subscribers, then published and banned across the English speaking world,
My Secret Life is preserved here in its original full text, in three editions of the complete unabridged eleven volumes.

In the foreword, Dr. Wessington-Worth has painstakingly researched the origins and authorship of this rare work
and explains the impact My Secret Life has had throughout the years.