The Kama Sutra is an ancient Indian text widely considered to be the standard work on human sexual behavior in Sanskrit literature written by the Indian scholar Vatsyayana.

The most widely known English translation of the Kama Sutra was privately printed in 1883. It is usually attributed to the notorious traveler and author Sir Richard Francis Burton, but the chief work was done by the pioneering Indian archeologist, Bhagvanlal Indraji, under the guidance of Burton's friend, the Indian civil servant Foster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot.

Burton and Arbuthnot made it a point to defy British law when they published the Kama Sutra through The Kama Shastra Society, a secretive, educational society. Using a clandestine meeting, they arranged with a publisher by the name of Payne to print the first copies of the Kama Sutra translated into the English language. Distributing these 250 original copies of the work, they made their identification difficult to ascertain.

One such copy made its way into a highly uptight manor in Isles of Wight … a place called Sealy Manor.