author
Edward Sellon
d. 1866
A restless Victorian figure whose life moved from military service in India to the underground world of erotic publishing, he wrote, translated, and illustrated works that sat far outside polite 19th-century literature.
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About the author
Born in 1818, Edward Sellon was an English writer, translator, and illustrator best known for erotic literature. Sources about him also note that he served in the East India Company army before turning to writing, and that his interests ranged into mythology, religion, and translation as well as more openly scandalous subjects.
Sellon is often remembered today for the way his work sits at the edge of Victorian culture: private, transgressive, and deeply at odds with the public moral tone of the period. His surviving reputation comes less from mainstream literary fame than from his place in the history of censorship, sexuality, and underground publishing.
He died in 1866. A portrait photograph was not clearly available from the sources I checked, but an image associated with his autobiographical work survives on his Wikipedia page.