"The most thoroughly sensual tale I have read in English for a long time," complained Geraldine Jewsbury in her reader's report on Rhoda Broughton's Not Wisely, but Too Well (1867). Initially serialised in The Dublin University Magazine, the novel had been brought to the attention of the publisher Bentley and Son by its editor, J S Le Fanu, who also happened to be Broughton's uncle. Although Jewsbury convinced Bentley that this novel was unsuitable...