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1898 · 10212 — Paris et London: Privately Printed 1930 1898. Reprint. Stiff Boards. Very Good. Minor shelf/edge wear else tight bright and unmarred. Staplebound/tape in lace patterned wrappers. 8vo in one volume 53 pages lacking illustrations. Volume I lacks two plates. In English from the French. This copy is only one volume in set of three. <br/><br/>Influenced by the Marquis de SadeÂ’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 SultanÂ’s ReverieÂ’ was published in William LazenbyÂ’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 LondonÂ’ 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. There is a U.S. reprint: ‘Paris et London 1898” N.Y. c. 1930— Clandestine Erotic Fiction in English 1800–1930: A Bibliographical Study by Peter Mendes. Scarce in any 19th or early 20th century edition. Privately Printed hardcover books