Description
Book SynopsisClementina, Viscountess Hawarden produced over eight hundred photographs during her all-too-brief life. Most of these were portraits of her adolescent daughters. In this title, these pictures become windows into Victorian culture, eroticism, mother-daughter relationships, and intimacy.
Trade Review“The author’s perspectives on Victorian and contemporary issues of intimacy, exhibition, maternity, sexuality, just to name a few of the themes in play here, open up new perspectives for the reader, who thus feels inspired to stop and dream for a while, hoping to do so as acutely and as inventively as Mavor does.”—Joseph Litvak, author of
Strange Gourmets: Theory, Sophistication, and the Novel“Handsomely written and carefully researched, this book will have large appeal. It is a real treasure—indeed, unforgettable.”—Richard Howard
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Preface: “Only, my secret’s mine, and I won’t tell”
An Erotic Note
A Queer Note
Introduction: Adolescent Reverie
Reduplicative Desires
“In Which the Story Pauses a Little”
Sapphic Narcissa
Collecting Loss
Postscript
List of Illustrations
Notes
Works Cited
Index 211
