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Summary
Summary
With several million copies sold in the last fifty years, My Secret Life , first published by Grove Press in the 1960s, is one of the most famous pornographic works in literary history. What readers of this long-banned and troubling book of violent sexual fantasies failed to realize is that it is also the confession of history's most fiendish killer.
Written during the era of Jack the Ripper, it's narrated by "Walter," the pseudonym of textile millionaire Henry Spencer Ashbee. Walter was a voyeur and rapist obsessed with prostitutes, and his writing revealed his darkest sexual secrets. He died in 1901, long before his book would be widely read. Only now have researchers finally come to the conclusion that "Walter" and Jack the Ripper were, in fact, one and the same.
Jack the Ripper's Secret Confession puts all the pieces together, and its new theory will amaze and titillate scholars who for generations have pondered the true identity of history's most brutal murderer.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Television director Monaghan and author Cawthorne (Serial Killers and Mass Murderers) fail to prove their case that Jack the Ripper, who murdered and mutilated five prostitutes in London's Whitechapel area in 1888, and a pseudonymous author known only as "Walter" were one and the same. The authors spend most of the book re-telling portions of Walter's story from his 11-volume erotic memoir, My Secret Life, and attempting to prove that Walter-who raped his first girl as 18 and had a lifelong obsession with raping virgins-was responsible for the Ripper killings. But the links Monaghan and Cawthorne try to establish with the Ripper (they note Walter's links to older prostitutes, the type of women Jack killed; they count the number of times certain common words appear in both the book and a letter Jack allegedly sent to the authorities) are flimsy. Whoever Walter was, the authors do not close the case of Jack the Ripper-a case that has mystified the public for well over a century. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
According to Monaghan and Cawthorne, the key to the identity of Jack the Ripper resides within a huge trove of pornography in a closed cupboard at the British Library, where it has been virtually undisturbed for over fifty years. Specifically, it's in My Secret Life, a work attributed to one Walter that, in abridgments and partial facsimile editions, has been hailed as a pornographic classic. The full text has been viewed by few but in 2004 became available on the Internet. Its author reveals himself to be a calculating sadist with an uncontrollable temper. What's more, it is quite possible to identify some of the victims of Jack in the purported work of fiction. Monaghan and Cawthorne resift the evidence in the Ripper case at length and end up asserting that textile trader Henry Spencer Ashbee, an associate of explorer-author Richard Burton and poet Algernon Swinburne, was Walter and, therefore, Jack. With its high bibliographic quotient, this engrossing reexamination may be the most library-appropriate book ever on its subject.--Tribby, Mike Copyright 2010 Booklist
