SOURCE: Hyde, H. Montgomery. “The Pornography of Perversion.” In A History of Pornography, pp. 122-52. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1964.

In the following excerpt, Hyde discusses nineteenth-century pornography devoted to sado-masochistic practices, homosexuality, and incest.

[1]

Apart from purely erotic pornography, there are various manifestations of sexual abnormality in pornographic literature, such as sado-masochistic practices, homosexuality, incest, transvestism and sundry forms of fetichism. The principal sado-masochistic perversion is, of course, flagellation. We have already seen how it was practised in the period of ancient Rome and in the Middle Ages. Later on it was to become so popular in England, particularly in the nineteenth century, that it became known on the European Continent as ‘the English vice’ (le vice anglais).

Some consideration must be given to the lives and personalities of the individuals who have given their names to the two best known perversions: sadism, or sexual emotion...