Stimulating Texts: The Politics and Aesthetics of Arousal in Victorian Literature and Culture deals with representations of sexual affect in mid- and late-nineteenth century English literature and culture. In considering this particular aspect of Victorian society, I propose that it would be profitable to go beyond the existing scholarly considerations of desire. Such considerations, I argue, are too broad, failing to account for specific processes by which bodies respond to stimuli. Rather than understand desire as a uniformly useful rubric for approaching sexuality in Victorian texts, I focus on the particular, often peculiar build up to desire, especially the intensely bodily experience of sexual sensation.