Romance of Lust

The four volume Victorian erotic novel of 1873 to 1876, published anonymously. Attributed variously to Edward Sellon or William Simpson Potter; unresolved.

Original byline

Anonymous

Published

Date not recorded

Form

Novels

Authorship

Disputed among candidates

Reason for anonymity

Propriety

Copyright

Public domain

Reference

Wikipedia · Wikidata

The authorship story

The Romance of Lust appeared in four anonymous volumes between 1873 and 1876, a compendium of Victorian clandestine erotica issued through the underground trade around William Lazenby. Bibliographers of the genre, following Henry Spencer Ashbee's contemporary notes, have variously attributed it to the pornographer Edward Sellon or to the collector William Simpson Potter, sometimes as editor of a group effort; Sellon's death in 1866 complicates the simplest version. No attribution has been established, and this site records the question as disputed. Victorian erotica was authorless by necessity, and this, its most notorious production, stays that way.

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