Family secrets : living with shame from the Victorians to the present day / Deborah Cohen.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 255-353) and index.

"Both a story of family secrets and of how they were revealed, this book journeys from the frontier of empire, where British adventurers made secrets that haunted their descendants for generations, to the confessional vanguard of modern-day genealogy two centuries later. It explores personal, apparently idiosyncratic decisions: hiding an adopted daughter's origins , traking a disbaled son to a garde party, talking ceaselessly (or not at all) about a homosexual uncle. Cohen excavates the tangleds history of privacy and secrecy to explian why privacy is now viewed as a halowed right while secrets are condemned as destructive. ..."--Book jacket.