Peter Gay

Education of the Senses

The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud

Education of the Senses is the first volume in Peter Gay's panoramic study of the European and American middle classes from the 1820s to the outbreak of World War I. Drawing on psychoanalytic insights and a rich array of primary sources, Gay reexamines the sexual behavior and attitudes of the Victorians, overturning a myriad of stereotypes, especially about women.

"[Education of the Senses is] the most learned, as well as the wittiest survey of human sexuality ever to be published." — New York Times

"A major work of cultural history, monumental in its ambitions, immensely readable, powerfully humane. It is sure to change the way we think about our present as well as our past."—The Nation

"An astonishing achievement."—Newsweek

"A subtle, elegant, profound and prodigiously researched book."—Washington Post Book World

"[Restores to] the century it treats a historical objectivity which allows us really to see, rather than to categorize patronizingly, our middle-class ancestors."—San Francisco Chronicle