The Abductors, Stuart Cloete

Hardback, 1st edition, Good Condition with yellowed pages and DJ worn and with foxing.

The Victorian Age will never seem the same to readers of this disquieting novel, which is at once an engrossing, unsettling drama and a startlingly explosive sociological exposé of an era more usually remembered for its elegance and propriety.

Victoria’s reign apotheosized modesty and delicacy to the point of prudery, yet it also had its ugly underside. And of all the crawling things beneath the virtuous surface, none was more dreadful that the brutal traffic in young girls, many of them hardly more than children, who were abducted to stock the “knocking shops” of London and the most depraved bordellos of the Continent and South America. Far worse, such brazen lawlessness simply could not have existed without the knowledge and compliance of those in power, both socially and politically.