The Rodiad is a pornographic poem on the subject of flagellation published by John Camden Hotten in 1871, although falsely dated to 1810. It was falsely ascribed when printed to George Colman the Younger. [1] Its author was Richard Monckton Milnes. [2] [3] [4] Henderson places it in The Library Illustrative of Social Progress published around 1872 (falsely dated 1777) [5] but it is not in the list of Henry Spencer Ashbee. [6]
The Betuliad, a manuscript in the British Library from Ashbee's bequest, [7] is identical to The Rodiad. [8] It was known under this title to Sir Richard Burton [4] who wrote to Milne on 22 January 1860 praising it. [9] [10]
The Canadian author John Glassco repeated the false attribution to Colman and augmented it with an equally fictitious attribution of his own poem Squire Hardman printed in 1967. [11]
George Colman, known as "the Younger", was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer. He was the son of George Colman the Elder.
Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton, FRS was an English poet, patron of literature and a politician who strongly supported social justice.
Theresa Berkley or Berkeley was a 19th-century English dominatrix who ran a brothel in Hallam Street, just to the east of Portland Place, Marylebone, London, specialising in flagellation. She is notable as the inventor of the "chevalet" or "Berkley Horse", a BDSM apparatus.
The Berkley Horse is a BDSM apparatus, designed for, and by, Theresa Berkley in 1828. She referred to it as a "chevalet".
Erotic literature comprises fictional and factual stories and accounts of eros intended to arouse similar feelings in readers. This contrasts erotica, which focuses more specifically on sexual feelings. Other common elements are satire and social criticism. Much erotic literature features erotic art, illustrating the text.
Henry Spencer Ashbee was a book collector, writer and bibliographer. He is notable for his massive, clandestine three-volume bibliography of erotic literature published under the pseudonym of Pisanus Fraxi.
Rosa Coote is a fictional dominatrix appearing as a stock character in a number of works of Victorian erotica, including The Convent School, or Early Experiences of A Young Flagellant by William Dugdale and "Letters to a Lady Friend" or "Miss Coote's Confession" in The Pearl. Henry Spencer Ashbee writes of The Convent School that "The book is not altogether badly written; no part of the narrative however is attractive".
William Simpson Potter was a 19th-century English author. Potter was a friend of Henry Spencer Ashbee, a merchant, bibliographer, bibliophile, authority on the life and works of Miguel de Cervantes, and collector of erotic materials. Ashbee describes Potter as a "shrewd business man, the ardent collector, and the enthusiastic traveller".
The Romance of Lust, or Early Experiences is a Victorian erotic novel written anonymously in four volumes during the years 1873–1876 and published by William Lazenby. Henry Spencer Ashbee discusses this novel in one of his bibliographies of erotic literature. In addition the compilers of British Museum General Catalogue of Printed Books list this book.
John Glassco was a Canadian poet, memoirist and novelist. According to Stephen Scobie, "Glassco will be remembered for his brilliant autobiography, his elegant, classical poems, and for his translations." He is also remembered by some for his erotica.
My Secret Life, by "Walter", is the memoir of a gentleman describing the author's sexual development and experiences in Victorian England. It was first published in a private edition of eleven volumes, at the expense of the author, including an imperfect index, which appeared over seven years beginning around 1888.
Edward Sellon (1818–1866) was an English writer, translator, and illustrator of erotic literature.
James Campbell Reddie was a 19th-century British solicitor, collector and author of pornography, who, writing as "James Campbell", worked for the publisher William Dugdale. According to Henry Spencer Ashbee, Reddie was self-taught and viewed his works from a philosophical point of view.
The Amours of Sainfroid and Eulalia or Venus in the Cloister is a pornographic book published in New York City in 1854, translated from the French Les Amours de Sainfroit, jésuite, et Eulalie, fille dévote published by Isaac van der Kloot at The Hague in 1729. It is an anticlerical account of the seduction of a nun by a Jesuit priest. Henry Spencer Ashbee suggests that it is based on an historical incident in Toulon in 1728–29, involving Jesuit priest Jean-Baptiste Girard and alleged witch Catherine Cadière.
The Private Case is a collection of erotica and pornography held initially by the British Museum and then, from 1973, by the British Library. The collection began between 1836 and 1870 and grew from the receipt of books from legal deposit, from the acquisition of bequests and, in some cases, from requests made to the police following their seizures of obscene material.
The New Epicurean: The Delights of Sex, Facetiously and Philosophically Considered, in Graphic Letters Addressed to Young Ladies of Quality is a Victorian erotic novel published by William Dugdale in 1865 and attributed to Edward Sellon. The novel is falsely dated "1740", and is written as an eighteenth-century pastiche, composed of a series of letters addressed to various young ladies.
The Library Illustrative of Social Progress was a series of pornographic books published by John Camden Hotten around 1872. They were mainly reprints of eighteenth-century pornographic works on flagellation. Hotten claimed to have found them in the library of Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–1862) but Henry Spencer Ashbee counterclaimed that they were in fact from his collection.
Fashionable Lectures: Composed and Delivered with Birch Discipline was a pornographic book originally published in the 18th century and republished by John Camden Hotten as volume 7 of his series The Library Illustrative of Social Progress around 1872. Hotten claimed to have found them in the library of Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–1862) but Henry Spencer Ashbee claimed that they were in fact from his collection. The first edition was published around 1750 and again with illustrations by William Holland in the 1780s.
Experimental Lecture is an English pornographic book published in 1878 by the pseudonym "Colonel Spanker" for the "Cosmopolitan Society of Bibliophiles", an imprint of Charles Carrington. The Colonel and his circle have a house in Park Lane where genteel young ladies are kidnapped, humiliated, and flagellated.