Barbed & Bare

Enter the scented ruins of Victorian society with this outrageously satirical anthology, capturing the essays, memoirs, reviews, and unsolicited advice of Sebastian Spiteful: a critic, libertine, and unabashed social saboteur.

Spiteful navigates the era's labyrinth of moral hypocrisy with sharp wit, whether lampooning dinner party etiquette, psychoanalysing the Brontës, or mistakenly treating brothels as literary salons.

Each barbed remark is delivered with theatrical scorn and the swish of a lace-gloved hand.

Beyond mere mockery, this collection peels back the velvet curtain on Victorian views of sexuality. In a society obsessed with propriety, sex was tucked away behind euphemism and embroidered corsets-simultaneously denied in polite conversation yet feverishly debated in hushed corners and scandalous pamphlets. Spiteful exposes the absurdity and repression that defined the age, highlighting both its rigid moral codes and the flourishing subcultures that rebelled in secret.

Witty, brazen, and unapologetically flamboyant, this anthology invites you not simply to read, but to recline upon a velvet chaise of cynicism and contemplate the sighs and subversions beneath the surface of Victorian desire.

Relax. Sebastian Spiteful will do all the scandalous sighing for you.

This paperback illustrated edition has over 30 Black and White pictures.