A superb example of Victorian erotica focusing on sexual flagellation, The Mysteries of Verbena House, by Etonensis, was first published as two volumes in one in 1882. Only 150 copies were issued, probably by William Lazenby, at the price of four guineas. The first volume was issued in 1881 under the half-title: Birched for Thieving, or the Punishment of Miss Bellasis. The second volume and the full title appeared in 1882. As in most flagellant erotica, the plot is rather slim. Verbena House is a fashionable school for young ladies in Brighton. Miss Montes, a student from Cuba, is robbed of two golden doubloons. The nominal ‘mystery’ centres on the discovery of the culprit: Miss Catherine Bellasis, the beautiful sixteen year old daughter of a Chancery barrister. During the hunt for the stolen coins, a number of other offences are detected: Miss Hatherton possesses an obscene book, John Cleland’s Fanny Hill, and Miss Hazeltine has hidden a bottle of gin. The girls are condemned to be flogged by the headmistress, Miss Sinclair. Volume I is taken up with the narration of these events. Volume II is primarily concerned with the castigation of the culprits. Up until the detection of her students’ misdemeanours, Miss Sinclair, the headmistress, has been averse to corporal punishment. After deciding that the girls’ are to be beaten, she seeks the advice of the school’s spiritual advisor, the Reverend Arthur Calvedon, on the appropriate disciplinary procedure. A devotee of the rod, he becomes Miss Sinclair’s lover. In the process, and during the course of the girls’ chastisement, Miss Sinclair undergoes a remarkable conversion: she is transformed from a “maid-mistress” into a lewd votary, registering “a vow to become a fearless heroine of the birch, and make the sufferings of her pupils minister to her devices.” The book’s title hints at this lascivious metamorphosis: the psycho-spiritual transformation it represents is a deeper ‘mystery’ than the question of who stole Miss Montes’ doubloons.

The Mysteries of Verbena House; or, Miss Bellasis Birched for Thieving

Literature & Fiction

Etonensis

Erotica

Birchgrove Press

In the assembly-room of the Society of Aristocratic Flagellants, Mayfair, Colonel Spanker strives to confirm his thesis that the punishment of a refined young lady produces more exquisite pleasures than flogging lower-class women and prostitutes… Experimental Lecture by Colonel Spanker is one of the most notorious nineteenth-century English flagellant novels. Henry Spencer Ashbee’s Catena Librorum Tacendorum describes it as ‘the most coldly cruel and unblushingly indecent of any we have ever read, [it] stands entirely alone in the English language.’ (Fraxi, 1885: 250) This edition of Experimental Lecture also includes the full text of The Yellow Room or, Alice Darvell’s Subjection, a late Victorian novella focusing on the delights of birching and the pleasures of cruelty. Following the death of her aunt, beautiful Alice Darvell is sent to live with Sir Edward Bosmere, a stern disciplinarian and devotee of Venus Callipyge, who initiates her into the mysteries of the rod. The Yellow Room was first published in 1891. The name of the author, M. Le Comte du Bouleau, is a pseudonym. Authorship is attributed to an English lawyer, Stanislas Matthew de Rhodès (1857-1932). He is also credited with writing Gynecocracy (1893) and The Petticoat Dominant (1898), which are available from Birchgrove Press.

Experimental Lecture By Colonel Spanker

ANONYMOUS

Influenced by the Marquis de Sade’s libertine fiction, The Pleasures of Cruelty is one of the darkest Victorian flagellant novels, reveling in cruelty, degradation, and the pleasures of the rod. An extract entitled ‘The Sultan’s Reverie’ was published in William Lazenby’s underground periodical The Pearl: A Journal of Facetiæ and Voluptuous Reading in December 1880 (Number 18). The first complete edition (three volumes in one) seems to have been published, possibly by Lazenby, in 1886. An edition was also published in ‘Paris et London’ in 1898, probably by Leonard Smithers and Duringe. The author is unknown but it has been conjectured that The Pleasures of Cruelty was written by General Studholme Hodgson or another member (or members) of the flagellant circle that flourished around Richard Monckton-Milnes, Lord Houghton.

The Pleasures of Cruelty; Being a sequel to the reading of Justine et Juliette by the Marquis de Sade

Following the bungled seduction of his beautiful tutor, Charles, Lord Linwood, is sent to Holywell Hall, a magnificent country estate, to be taught by an imperious French governess, Mademoiselle Diane d’Erébe. Outraged at his placement under feminine or petticoat rule, Charles experiences a profound sense of abasement. His humiliation is exacerbated through subjection to the discipline of the rod and enforced cross-dressing. Submission, however, transforms into a path of love and exquisite pleasure… The Petticoat Dominant was first issued in 1898 by Leonard Smithers (1861-1907), an English publisher significant for his support of Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde, and his partner Duringe. It was probably published and printed in Paris, where Smithers’ clandestine trade was based in the late 1890s. The name of the author, M. Le Comte du Bouleau, is, of course, a pseudonym. Authorship is attributed to an English lawyer, Stanislas Matthew de Rhodès (1857-1932), who is also credited with writing The Yellow Room (1891) and Gynecocracy (1893). It is worth noting, though, that Gynecocracy has also been attributed to the English psychologist, Henry Havelock Ellis (1859-1939).

The Petticoat Dominant or Woman’s Revenge The Autobiography of a Young Nobleman as a Pendant to Gynecocracy by M. Le Comte du Bouleau

Le Comte du Bouleau [pseud.: attributed to Stanislas Matthew de Rhodès], M.

First published c. 1904 in France, Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden is a hilarious and remarkably inventive collection of erotic prose and verse written by the influential libertine-mystic and magician Aleister Crowley. Sections of prose and verse are unified through a biographical frame narrative attributing them to a single author-poet-perpetrator. The first section, The Nameless Novel, was written primarily to amuse Crowley’s convalescing wife, Rose Kelly. A scatological parody of erotic literature, it takes aim at the usual targets of libertine fiction and modern erotica but, at the same time, lampoons their (libertine fiction and erotica’s) limitations and conventions through absurdity and hyperbole. The verse sections, which include black parodies of notable Victorian poets such as Robert Browning and Algernon Charles Swinburne, were added to extend the literary forms in Crowley’s earlier erotic work, White Stains (1898), which is also available from Birchgrove Press.

Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden

CROWLEY, Aleister

Following an indiscretion with a maid, exuberant Julian Robinson is sent to his family’s country estate to be educated by a beautiful and bewitching French governess, Mademoiselle de Chambonnard, who subjects him to a rigorous disciplinary regime of birching and cross-dressing. Complete in three volumes, Gynecocracy is an influential masterpiece of Victorian clandestine erotica, first published in 1893. It is significant for the novelty of its focus on the subjection of a young man to women through enforced cross-dressing. The authorship of Gynecocracy is attributed to an English lawyer, Stanislas Matthew de Rhodès (1857-1932), who is also credited with writing The Yellow Room (1891) and The Petticoat Dominant (1898), which are also available from Birchgrove Press.

Gynecocracy. A narrative of the Adventures and Psychological Experiences of Julian Robinson (afterwards Viscount Ladywood) Under Petticoat-Rule, written by himself

Robinson [pseud.: attributed to Stanislas Matthew de Rhodès], Julian

Written by magician and occultist Aleister Crowley and published clandestinely in 1898, White Stains is a collection of verse tracing the demise of a fictitious poet, George Archibald Bishop. His biography is given in the Preface. Crowley wrote White Stains as a refutation of the psychiatrist and pioneering sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s contention in Psychopathia Sexualis that sexual perversions are a consequence of disease. Crowley’s verse, which is modelled on Decadent and Symbolist poetry, explores a range of ostensible sexual aberrations. Excerpts from several poems appear in another clandestine classic, Raped on the Railway (c. 1899). White Stains was published by the London-based publisher Leonard Smithers. It was printed, in Amsterdam, on hand-made paper, in a limited edition of 100 copies. Many of these are supposed to have been destroyed by British customs officials in 1924. Crowley revised and extended White Stains’ pseudo-biographical project in his wildly inventive black parody of literary erotica, Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden (c. 1904). Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden and Raped on the Railway are available from Birchgrove Press.

White Stains The Literary Remains of George Archibald Bishop A Neuropath of the Second Empire

The Romance of Chastisement; or, Revelations of the School and Bedroom is arguably the most sophisticated, most literary, and most amusing mid-Victorian fictional text focusing on flagellation. A collection of short stories and verse sparkling with sexual suggestion and wit, it was first published by John Camden Hotten in 1871 in a volume bearing the false imprint date 1870. It was reprinted by Edward Avery in 1888. An earlier book with the same title was issued by William Dugdale in 1866. This work had a different sub-heading: Revelations of Miss Darcy. The Victorian bibliographer Henry Spencer Ashbee suggests that both books were written by the same author, whom he reveals to have been St. George H. Stock. Formerly a lieutenant in the 2nd or Queen’s Royal Regiment, Stock issued his work originally in episodes from Dublin. Hotten purchased 200 sets from him and bound them into a single volume. St. George H. Stock also wrote the four short flagellant works that constitute Rosy Tales! (1874) and contributed to The Whippingham Papers (1888 [1887]), which are also available from Birchgrove Press.

The Romance of Chastisement; or, Revelations of the School and Bedroom.

Expert, An

Literary

The Flogging-Block is Victorian poet Algernon Charles Swinburne’s mock-heroic tribute to corporal punishment. In a prologue and twelve eclogues, Swinburne describes, with considerable vigour and black humour, the torment, anguish, and delights of the scholastic rod from the perspectives of beaten school boys, despotic masters, and joyous witnesses. It does not contain explicit sexual content. This edition of The Flogging-Block is a page by page transcription of the original manuscript, which is owned by the British Library. It does not reproduce Simeon Solomon’s illustrations. A master of lyric, rhythm, and rhyme, Swinburne was one of the most brilliant poets of the Victorian era. He was also a life-long enthusiast of flagellation, weaving flagellant scenes and motifs into his poems, letters, novels, and dramatic works. He composed The Flogging-Block, which remained unpublished until now, between 1862 and 1881.

The Flogging-Block An Heroic Poem in a Prologue and Twelve Eclogues by Algernon Charles Swinburne. A Transcription of The Original Holograph Manuscript Written at intervals between 1862 and 1881

SWINBURNE, Algernon Charles

Poetry

Stays and Gloves is an intriguing early twentieth-century novel focusing on petticoat discipline and flagellation. Following the death of his father and his mother’s imminent remarriage, a boy is sent to an elite English boarding school. Lady Flayskin, the head-mistress, compels both boys and girls to dress as girls. As the subtitle suggests, figure training and deportment are cultivated through tight corsets, high-heeled boots, and kid gloves. Discipline is enforced through the vigorous application of birch and whip. Whilst cross-dressing is a feature of this novel, the central chapters focus on the subjection of a haughty young aristocrat, Miss Virginia Malville. Stays and Gloves was first published in 1909 by Roberts et Dardaillon in Paris. It was printed on hand-made paper in a limited edition of 330 copies with ten copperplate engravings by Del Giglio. The author is not known. Stays and Gloves was reprinted c. 1926 (with the original imprint date MCMIX on the title page) by the Librairie Artistique, 66, Boulevard Magenta, Paris, in a limited edition of 330 copies with ten copperplate engravings by G. Smit. This Birchgrove Press edition is based on the c. 1926 reprint and reproduces its beautiful chapter head and tail pieces.

Stays and Gloves: Figure-Training and Deportment by Means of the Discipline of Tight Corsets, Narrow High-Heeled Boots, Clinging Kid Gloves, Combinations, etc., etc.

Kidrodstock, Lord

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