“Dear
Mr [Oscar] Wilde,
I thank you for your letter with its enclosed cutting of
your review published in The Times on Tuesday last. Your
comments about my latest work were an unexpected kindness
and were no less welcome for being unsolicited. I fear my
work must seem dry and uninspiring next to your own for
I am a man of science and not a pederast...”
JEREMY SELMAN-TROYTT (1868-1916) was a (fictitious!) Victorian
colossus, a pioneer of mental and physical sexual health
and a tireless recorder of physiological changes within
his own body.
His work was a catalyst for the sexual revolution of the
nineteen-sixties, following a dark interregnum filled with
austerity, sexual abstinence and international combat. Although
he had no direct experience of intercourse (he was plagued
with premature ejaculation, invariably climaxing weeks in
advance of anticipated coition) he became an expert theorist,
selflessly advising the gentry as to how congress could
be negotiated with minimal shame and repugnance. Winston
Churchill was an early disciple, whilst W.G. Grace never
lost hope that Selman-Troytt might one day be instrumental
in bringing his wife to orgasm.
THE SELMAN-TROYTT PAPERS is the first anthology of Selman-Troytt’s
writing, and includes such masterpieces of prose and observation
as “My First Nocturnal Emission” and “The
Third Time I Soiled My Trousers”. It also features
Selman-Troytt’s fascinating correspondence with Oscar
Wilde among other luminaries of the late Victorian age,
although he rarely if ever received replies to the thousands
of letters he himself sent. And his distinguished family
history (he came from glass putty stock) is revealed for
the first time, illustrated with a wealth of fabulous portraits.
A plethora of prefaces, forewords, introductions, prologues,
pofaces, indices, appendices, footnotes and endnotes add
a final layer of relish.
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