CHICAGO – The Leather Archives & Museum has acquired a complete seven-volume set of the original printing of “The Library Illustrative of Social Progress”. John Camden Hotten, creating reprints of earlier pornographic works, published this collection circa 1872.
The volumes include:
1-2. Exhibition of female flagellants in the modest and incontinent world
3. Lady Bumtickler’s revels : a comic opera in two acts
4. A treatise of the use of flogging in venereal affairs
5. Madame Birchini’s dance : a modern tale
6. Sublime of flagellation : in letters from Lady Termagant Flaybum, of Birch-Grove, to Lady Harriet Tickletail, of Bumfiddle-Hall
7. Fashionable lectures : composed and delivered with birch discipline
This is the only known publicly available copy of the complete original seven-volume set. The purchase was funded in part by sales of duplicate materials received by the LA&M. Images of the collection will be made available on the institution’s FaceBook page once preliminary preservation work has been completed.
Contemporary reprints of the seven volume set will be acquired for use by LA&M patrons, while the original printing volumes will be preserved in the LA&M’s climate controlled archival storage space.
Leather Archives & Museum
