{"product_id":"2026200015712-secondhand-the-girl-with-the-swansdown-seat","title":"The Girl With The Swansdown Seat","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Condition as shown in image\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eVictorian England was a world of stark contradictions — pious morality on the surface, and a teeming, scandalous underworld lurking just beneath — and Cyril Pearl's The Girl with the Swansdown Seat tears back the respectable curtain to reveal the riotous truth of 19th-century London's erotic culture. Pearl chronicles the lives of the courtesans, music-hall performers, and demi-mondaines who populated the margins of polite society, presenting a vivid portrait of an era simultaneously obsessed with propriety and consumed by vice. Drawing on a wealth of period sources, the narrative uncovers the commercial machinery of Victorian sexuality, from the bawdy theatres of the West End to the notorious pleasure gardens that catered to every class of gentleman.\n\nPearl writes with the wit and irreverence of a seasoned social historian, employing sharp, ironic prose that illuminates the hypocrisy embedded at the very heart of the Victorian establishment. The book stands as a landmark work of popular history, illustrating how attitudes toward gender, class, and desire were shaped — and subverted — by those bold enough to transgress them. For anyone who believes they know the real Victorian age, Pearl's masterwork presents a far more colourful and morally complex world waiting to be discovered.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49203255574747,"sku":"2026200015712-SECONDHAND","price":10.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/9d329e85-78bf-4d25-b7de-555f4d68a3f6.png?v=1788146549","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200015712-secondhand-the-girl-with-the-swansdown-seat","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}