Book Review: The Romance of Chastisement

The Romance of Chastisement; or, Revelations of School and Bedroom, by An Expert.

Delectus Classics of Erotic Literature, £19.95

This is one of the great underground classics, so it is to my eternal shame that I have to admit that I have only just read it. And I call myself a libertine...

As the scholarly introduction to the facsimile reprint of the 1888 edition makes clear, this work was originally published by John Camden Hotten in 1871. Hotten was famous for both his pornography and his thievery, being a man who would cheerfully pirate someone else's work, give it a new title and then publish it himself. Thus the version of how this work came into his grasping paws must be treated with some caution. A Nineteenth Century bibliographer, quoted in the introduction, claimed that a thousand copies were printed in Dublin and that Hotton bought 200 to sell in London. I am dubious about that claim since the work appears to be a compilation of short stories which may have circulated in pamphlet form in the London porno circuit of the day. The notion of Hotton paying for 200 copies is also highly unlikely - more probable would be him buying once copy and then pirating the rest. Since no complaints have come down to us of Irish publishers seeking redress, and since there is no record of the other 800 copies, the most likely explanation is that Hotton cobbled the work together himself from some already existing pamphlets.

To be fair to him, if that is what happened then he chose some rather nice works to print up in hardback form. The Romance of Chastisement is full of sweet young ladies who find themselves upended to feel the kiss of the cane or the birch rod's tickle across their bare bottoms. Victorian Pornography was expensive and was written for an upper class readership, so the work is literate and filled with Latin bon mots and French sentences.The modern reader is not going to get turned on with any Victorian work because tastes have changed so much over the last century, but The Romance of Chastisement is an amusing and well written excursion into the mind of the Victorian male.

Is it a must have for your collection? Yes, I would say that it is. The fact that it is so well written means that you can have it in your book case as a conversation piece if nothing else.