Flagellation and the Flagellants. A history of the rod in all countries from the earliest period to the present time.

London : William Reeves, n.d. [1877?]. “A new edition, revised and corrected”. Octavo, publisher’s blind-blocked brown cloth with gilt device to upper board (corners bumped), spine lettered and illustrated in gilt (ends a little softened); front pastedown with armorial bookplate of ‘Hall of Otterburn, Northumberland’, front free-endpaper with early pencilled ownership inscription, pp. xii; 544, with 20 b/w plates and numerous in-text illustrations; clean and sound throughout, a very good copy.

An essential reference for both the practitioner and amateur enthusiast on all aspects of flagellation. Chapters are devoted to flagellation amongst the Jews, the Romans, the Carmelites, the Cistercians, the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Jesuits, the Quakers, penal flagellation, flagellation in Scotland, flagellation in Eastern nations, in Russia, in Africa, in France, military flogging, flogging in the navy, domestic flagellation, on the whipping of young ladies, eccentric flagellation, “Birch in the boudoir”, and so forth.

The author, a ‘Rev. William Cooper’, is in fact a pseudonym for British journalist James Glass Bertram (1824-1892). Flagellation and the Flagellants was first published in London by James Camden Hotten in 1870 [Ashbee Vol.1 p.460].