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A Dirty, Filthy Book

Sex, Scandal, and One Woman’s Fight in the Victorian Trial of the Century

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A Dirty, Filthy Book

By: Michael Meyer
Narrated by: Rachel Bavidge
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

London, 1877. A petite young woman stands before an all-male jury, about to risk everything. She takes a breath, and opens her defence.

Annie Besant and her confidant Charles Bradlaugh are on trial for the crime of publishing a birth control pamphlet. Remarkably, Annie is defending herself against obscenity charges 45 years before women can practice law in England. At a time when women were expected to be obedient, Annie’s fearless voice was a sensation and spotlighted issues of sex, censorship and morality.

A Dirty, Filthy Book tells the gripping story of a little-known pioneer who refused to accept the role that the establishment assigned her, and chose instead to resist.

‘Makes the case for Annie Besant as a truly eminent Victorian, as brilliant and fearless as she was beautiful’ The Times

©2024 Michael Meyer (P)2024 Penguin Audio

 Europe Gender Studies Great Britain Social Sciences Women England

Critic reviews

Michael Meyer has mined the rich seams of history and woven together a fascinating and gripping narrative. Beautifully told, it has echoes for today. I don’t know how he does it (Adam Hochschild, author of KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST)
Hugely entertaining, told with verve and humour, with a riveting court trial at its heart. A terrific study of the Victorian controversy and criminalisation of contraception and the dire consequences for women of confusing medicine with morals. At last, Annie Besant has found a champion equal to the task of doing justice to her crusading life and the significance of her achievements. Victorian patriarchy denied Besant her rightful place in political history: Michael Meyer has reinstated her, in all her glorious complexity, as the pioneering feminist changemaker in Britain's history of morals, censorship and sex. (Rachel Holmes, author of SYLVIA PANKHURST and ELEANOR MARX)
All stars
Most relevant
What a woman. She was always someone I had the deeepest respect for but now she is my absolute hero. Go Annie

Annie Besant

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This book is oversold ("trial of the century"). It retells a familiar story, that of Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh's prosecution for obscenity in 1877. The trial transcript is well known and the key passages here lean upon it heavily with occasionally glib interjections. The beginning and end of the book squeeze in some other details of Besant's fascinating biography in double-quick time. This kind of book is very popular now: history books based on episodes buttressed by hyperbolic claims for importance and relevance. The tone is also familiar, holding the readers hand, breathlessly imagining its main subjects feeling the rain on their skin, hearing the cries of street vendors, seeing motes illuminated in the sun's rays and so on. It's fine. The reading is clear and competent.

Superficial History

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