Delicious. Back in the seventies this book proved that women were naughty, dirty and utterly erotic. Anyone sitting at home ashamed of their fantasies now should pick this gem up and be liberated. No matter how obscene your fantasies are Nancy Friday is here to show you not only that you are not alone but that you're not even really trying.

There is one sad addendum - if you read later books by Firday you'll find that with the rise of porn, the internet and a general openness in society about about sex the originality and bizarre nature of the fantasies declines. With freedom, it seems, comes uniformity.

Oh my good God, this book is filthy. A book warped with women's pseudo-psycho sexual weirdness. A book sooo vastly wrong and repellent to the natural karma of human sexual nature, it makes Fifty Shades read like a Teletubby romp. In fact, this book is sooo filthy you will find your hands blushing shamefully, just because you are holding it, they and perhaps other extremities will glow with guilt.

Unless, you too, are pseudo-psycho sexually warped you will feel like you need to go straight to church and repent after reading it.

Now let me get this point across clearly. It is sooo filthy that I wouldn't even tarnish my righteous catholic dignity by going into its content publicly, and it is sooo salaciously smutty that I dared not give it more than three stars because then family and acquaintances might assume I had the audacity to enjoy reading it. What? Never! That is, of course, impossible and just well, utterly utterly filthy! :)

Retain an open mind if you read this book and never digest content in the presence of nuns or priests.. oh but wait, what page was that fantasy on again?

Now lets see.. where can I get the sequel..

There’s no denying the significance of My Secret Garden – it was a bold and necessary book in its time. I’m deeply sympathetic to Friday’s project: she affirms women’s fantasies without shame, and the result is vivid, curious, and often confronting. I appreciated how readable it was, and how deliberately she shapes a thesis – from my reading at least, that fantasy is a natural and valuable way to explore one’s sexuality.

But while I respect the book’s aims, I found her analysis frustrating. She tends to treat fantasies as *always* symbolic, emotionally abstract metaphors rather than sometimes just being what they seem. That’s especially clear in her reading of same-gender fantasies – she’s quicker to suggest women are yearning for more gentleness in their sex lives than the (far) simpler explanation that they might just be a little fruity… seems like that entails an unnecessary number of psychoanalytic hoops to default to jumping through.

Her use of Freudian psychology also weakens the book’s critical force – complex or queer desires are flattened into clichés like ‘penis envy’. And she’s inconsistent in her analysis, refusing to comment on incest fantasies because she’s ill-equipped to analyse them psychologically, but jumping into others, like bestiality, with flimsy pseudo-theory.

More than anything, I wish Friday took fantasy more seriously – not just in terms of harm or taboo, but in terms of character. Take the fantasy involving a coercive teacher… Friday brushes it off as harmless because it’s ‘just a fantasy’. But some desires signal *who we are* and how we relate to power. Whether or not they harm others, some fantasies may reflect or encourage vicious tendencies – we should be willing to interrogate that.

But my wishing is futile, because if the book had been more critical, it wouldn’t have done what it needed to do at the time of its release, so... I liked this book quite well enough for what it was, and I can appreciate it as a product of its time. However, as much as I think it was exactly what it needed to be - and successfully was - for liberating women’s sexuality in the 1970s, reading it in 2025, I personally found it just okay. Interesting, glad I read it, but ultimately left me wanting. I’d love to see this topic done more justice in a cultural landscape where we can be more critical, ask harder questions, and get more out of the venture.

Ok ok ok. How to describe explain this book make the points I want to make about it. I think this book would challenge a lot of people in my life. All of my close friends certainly. I think they wouldn't get it and would dismiss it harshly at the same time I encourage them to actually read it. The analysis was whatever rudimentary boring takes that are dated in modern feminist critism. But the stories the fantasies. They are real. From real people and they tell you so much more. It's a perspective so impossible to see for most people most of the time and that means something. However much people would hate this (and I get that) it is certainly interesting and important.

"My Secret Garden: Women's Sexual Fantasies" by Nancy Friday is a groundbreaking exploration of female sexuality that earns a solid four out of five stars. Published in the 1970s, it was revolutionary for its time, boldly delving into the taboo subject of women's sexual fantasies. Friday provides a candid and enlightening collection of anonymous accounts, offering readers a rare glimpse into the innermost desires and fantasies of women.

What makes this book particularly intriguing is its portrayal of women's sexual fantasies from the 1960s, shedding light on the sexual attitudes and societal norms of the era. Through these intimate narratives, Friday challenges stereotypes and empowers women to embrace their sexual desires without shame or judgment.

Although some of the content may seem tame by contemporary standards, "My Secret Garden" remains a provocative and insightful read, offering valuable perspectives on female sexuality that continue to resonate today.

[These notes were made in 1981:]. Naturally enough, I bought this out of prurient interest. And it is more or less what I expected - longish accounts of various types of erotic fantasy, linked with a facile tho' not by any means illiterate or vulgar commentary. It's printed on cheap paper, has a few typos (Brigid Brophy says no-one can bear to read pornography twice - hence it's never properly proof-read). It is not fiction; nor is it in any way scientific enough to be taken seriously as non-fiction. Yet, for all this, My Secret Garden has one purpose beyond the obvious. It is immensely reassuring. Those aspects of oneself which seemed most isolated, most perverse, have their echo in this book. One is not "sick" - or, if one is, one's in good company. (Note careful avoidance of first-person pronoun. Hypocrite!) And, of course, it was quite illuminating as to how far people will go in their fantasizing, although there is nothing here I haven't already met in the pages of Penthouse Forum. This book, however, lacks the almost flaunted speciousness of Forum's "reader contributions", and is in that degree more reassuring.

This book changed my life. As far as I know it is the first book of it's kind ever written. I picked it up while a senior in college at the University of Mn where I was studying Theatre Arts. My idea was to get some kind of clue to what women secretly think about...

It taught me that all women have sexy little fantasies that they hide from most people, even sometimes from themselves. 25 years after I read it, I began a similar book using her basic categories, or 'types' of flowers in the secret garden. I've read all of her books, but this one is still the best. It's fresh, new, and groundbreaking...Just as it was in 1969...

My belief now, after years of interviews with various women, is that every woman has inside her a bouquet of sexual fantasies that makes her totally unique from other women. No wonder men have such a hard time understanding and categorizing them...you simply can't. You can only experience each one a beautiful and completely unique individual...Just like flowers.

The premise is very valid, but MANY of the author's own comments aged horribly, and so did the lack of trigger warnings, especially for zooph*lia/animal abuse.

It was purely research...no, seriously!

I don't remember how I first heard about this book, but I think it was one of the first "erotic" pieces I read. It's a collection of fantasies submitted by anonymous women, at a time when repression was the norm. Some of the fantasies are vanilla, some are a bit scary, and some are quite hot. By the time the author/editor began compiling the later books in this series, women grew bolder in revealing their secret desires, and the later books grow hoter and raunchier, but this is an interesting introduction, and in a way a glimpse into the pre-sexual revolution.

Great book. It makes you feel like less of a weirdo for your own fantasies lol. And if you're an aspiring erotica writer its a great source of inspiration. Didn't really enjoy her interjections but I just skimmed over them.

Definitely worth the read.

2.5 stars

The concept is great and I loved the idea of doing a book like that (especially at the time of first publication -1973-).
I read this after reading Want by Gillian Anderson, which I absolutely adore (the book and the author)

However, it contains a couple of things that can be disturbing.

One letter from a teacher that proudly state that she likes to punish children while having them naked in her office truly shocked me.
I’m not shocked by fantasies because it’s supposed to be in your head and I strongly believe that there’s no shame in that, whatever the fantasy you have. BUT when it does happen in real life thats not okay.

I understand that the author simply transcribed the testimonies of others, but I would appreciate a note from her before or after something quite wrong like that, or to NOT include it in the book at all (and call the police …)

Other letters contained what was really rape or sexual assault without it being acknowledged as that by the author’s testimony. However I can possibly explained this because of the era when the book was written.

Overall, wouldn’t really recommend or at least to be read while keeping in mind the era that it was written in.

While this book was an interesting read it is very much a product of its time and should be read keeping that in mind.
Despite the afterword I am of the opinion that the submissions are from a pretty specific category of women, which is strengthened by the way the author herself describes some of her friends.
I plan on reading another book by that same author on the same subject (I assume in the same format) that was published in a later year, and I am very curious about how much the years will change not just the fantasies described, but also my presumptions about the author.


Beware of dog.