This chronicle does not seek to shock. Rather, it seeks to map the secret gardens where the Empire’s most upright citizens went to wilt.
Peculiar desires, unspoken, forever curating themselves among the world’s treasures. The Chronicles of Peculiar Desires in the Briti...
The Empire thus became a pressure valve. One could be peculiar, provided one was peculiar elsewhere . This chronicle does not seek to shock
, an 18th-century physician whose "curiosity" led him to amass over 71,000 objects, including 50,000 books and manuscripts. A chronicle of "peculiar desires" would likely mirror this impulse—the human need to categorize, own, and preserve the strange and the beautiful. 2. Literary Precedents and Satires provided one was peculiar elsewhere .