This first volume contains books one and two of the original eleven into which "Walter", from an upper-middle class English Victorian family, divided his sexual autobiography. It describes his recollections from earliest childhood of precocious curiosity about male and female anatomy and behaviour and the ways in which he satisfied it. In the prefaces to this volume he also talks of his later indecision about what to do with the mass of notes he had accumulated, throughout his life, many of which had been written almost immediately after the events described. Should he destroy them in case they were found after his death, or should he publish? As we see, he decided on publication. His work could not present a greater contrast to Casanova's book; Walter's style is repellent and coarse, and though he occasionally refers to other events in his life it is only as they impinge on or influence his varied sexual escapades. Its redeeming merit is its obvious truthfulness and the comprehensive nature of his experiences in the UK and on the Continent with women and occasionally men. It incidentally exposes the attitude of a relatively wealthy man to the classes he considered socially beneath him - servants, working people and prostitutes - and in words quoted on the cover, "reveals more about London's low life ... than a dozen or so Dickens or Mayhews." ( )

If you are interested in erotica, this book is absolutely crammed with sexual encounters (they have an average length of about two pages each and there's very little space devoted to anything else). There are servant girls, socialites, widows, prostitutes, the occasional man or boy, orgies, etc. etc. It's written in quite an episodic style and the various sex bits would have worked well even as indepentdent stories. ( )