''Lady Bumtickler's Revels'' is a

pornographic Pornography (colloquially called porn or porno) is sexually suggestive material, such as a picture, video, text, or audio, intended for sexual arousal. Made for consumption by adults, pornographic depictions have evolved from cave paintings ...

book written as a spoof

libretto A libretto (From the Italian word , ) is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to th ...

for a comic opera on the theme of

flagellation Flagellation (Latin , 'whip'), flogging or whipping is the act of beating the human body with special implements such as whips, Birching, rods, Switch (rod), switches, the cat o' nine tails, the sjambok, the knout, etc. Typically, floggin ...

. It was written and published by John Camden Hotten in 1872 in his series '' The Library Illustrative of Social Progress''. It purports to have been "performed at Lady Bumtickler's private theatre in Birch Grove, with unbounded applause". The characters, Master Lovebirch and Lady Belinda Flaybum, praise the delights of masochism, for example: "the male sex may taste something exquisitely sweet in a whipping from the hands of a woman".

References

External links

Full text of ''Lady Bumtickler's Revels''
on archive.org 1872 books Pornography in the United Kingdom {{sex-book-stub