Satyriasis Volume 3

Volume 3 of this extraordinary Victorian record of sexual obsession provides a remarkable insight into the nature of the anonymous author, Walter. Comprising over 1 million words, this unique document was published privately in an age when such frankness and explicit sexual description was virtually impossible to achieve in conventional society. Two years prior to the publication of this autobiography, the German psychiatrist, Kraft Ebbing, published his voluminous study of what was conceived then as sexual aberration, entitled Psychopathia Sexualis. Conventional medicine regarded the condition experienced by the author as "Satyriasis," a mind state which could not be controlled by willpower alone. In this third volume, the author describes his juvenile experiences with a number of different women, principally those of the working class with whom he came into contact on many occasions. By his late teens, the author was already paying for sex and would continue to do so during the course of his adult life. This was not unusual, as was revealed for example, in the trials of Oscar Wilde, who frequently paid for the services of "rent boys". This edition features an introduction by Kelvin I Jones, the renowned Sherlock Holmes scholar, and author of a biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.