The sexual exploitation of children by adults has a long, fraught history. Yet how cultures have reacted to it is shaped by a range of forces, beliefs, and norms, like any other social phenomenon. Changes in how Anglo-American culture has understood intergenerational sex can be seen with startling clarity in the life of British writer Norman Douglas (1868-1952), who was both a beloved and popular author, a friend of luminaries like Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, and D.H. Lawrence--as well as an unrepentant and uncloseted pederast. Rachel Hope Cleves's careful study opens a window onto the social history of intergenerational sex in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, revealing how charisma, celebrity, and contemporary standards protected Douglas from punishment--until they didn't. Unspeakable approaches Douglas as neither monster nor literary hero, but as a man who participated in an exploitative sexual subculture that was tolerated in ways we may find hard to understand. Using letters, diaries, memoirs, police records, novels, and photographs--including sources by the children Douglas encountered--Cleves identifies the cultural practices that structured pedophilic behaviors in England, Italy, and other places Douglas favored.

The resulting book delineates just how approaches to adult-child sex have changed over time, even as it offers insight into how society can confront today's scandals, celebrity and otherwise.