My Secret Life (erotica) - Authorship

Authorship

The true identity of "Walter" has never been discovered for certain. The most frequently cited likely author is Henry Spencer Ashbee (21 April 1834 – 29 July 1900), a book collector, writer, and bibliographer notable as an early authority on erotic literature. If Ashbee was not the actual author, he may well have been the compiler of the work's lengthy and extremely detailed index, and have provided other editorial assistance and help in getting the book into print.

Gershon Legman was the first to link "Walter" and Ashbee in his introduction to the 1962 reprints of Ashbee's bibliographies; the 1966 Grove Press edition of My Secret Life included an expanded version of that essay. On the other hand Steven Marcus, in his influential The Other Victorians (1966), concluded that the balance of known facts was against Legman's "shrewd and ingenious guess." Also unconvinced were Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen in their detailed study of My Secret Life, Walter the English Casanova (1967).

More recently, however, Ian Gibson's The Erotomaniac: the secret life of Henry Spencer Ashbee (2001, ISBN 0-571-19619-5) provides a detailed review of circumstantial evidence arguing that Ashbee wrote My Secret Life, presumably weaving fantasy and anecdotes from friends in with his own real-life experiences. In May 2000, Channel 4 broadcast a documentary on British TV, Walter: The Secret Life of a Victorian Pornographer, which also claimed that Ashbee was Walter.

Gordon Grimley's introduction to the 1972 edition of "My Secret Life" is sceptical of Ashbee's candidacy as the main author and makes a case for William Simpson Potter, a known associate of Ashbee's. According to Ashbee Potter was involved in authoring The Romance of Lust, an erotic work centred on incest and a range of sexual encounters.