Pleasures Taken

"This book is a knock-your-socks-off hummer. Daring, open, and engaging, "Pleasures Taken" is both brilliant and warmly seductive. The book keeps us off-balance and eager for more tilts, as the author depends partly on the material and partly on her own prose to open up for us a set of stunning ideas about these photographs, about visions of women and girls, about Victorian culture, and about the ideology of our own customary viewing habits."--James R. Kincaid, author of "Annoying the Victorians"