The Exhibition of Female Flagellants

Birchgrove Press brings together in one volume two books representing the developing corpus of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century English sexual fiction focusing on flagellation: Exhibition of Female Flagellants (c. 1780) and its sequel, Part the Second of the Exhibition of Female Flagellants (c. 1785). Collections of amusing anecdotes about the pleasures of flogging, these novellas focus on birching in aristocratic domestic and scholastic contexts, emphasise the display of blood, and extol the aphrodisiacal qualities of flowers. The author or authors are not known. Part one, Exhibition of Female Flagellants was first published about 1780, possibly by George Peacock in 1777. Part two, Part the Second of the Exhibition of Female Flagellants, was first published about 1785, probably also by George Peacock. Both books were reprinted in the early nineteenth century and by John Camden Hotten in 1872. This Birchgrove Press edition, which is based on Hotten's reprints, includes an Appendix with bibliographic details excerpted from Pisanus Fraxi's [Henry Spencer Ashbee's] Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1877). Ashbee's record provides a fascinating overview of both books' publishing history.