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...

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...

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...

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...