The Rodiad

The Rodiad is a pornographic poem on the subject of flagellation published by John Camden Hotten in 1871, although falsely dated to 1810. It was falsely ascribed when printed to George Colman the Younger.[1] Its author was Richard Monckton Milnes.[2][3][4] Henderson places it in The Library Illustrative of Social Progress published around 1872 (falsely dated 1777)[5] but it is not in the list of Henry Spencer Ashbee.[6]

The Betuliad, a manuscript in the British Library from Ashbee's bequest,[7] is identical to The Rodiad.[8] It was known under this title to Sir Richard Burton[4] who wrote to Milne on 22 January 1860 praising it.[9][10]

The Canadian author John Glassco repeated the false attribution to Colman and augmented it with an equally fictitious attribution of his own poem Squire Hardman printed in 1967.[11]

References

1. Knight, George Wilson (1971). Neglected powers: essays on nineteenth and twentieth century literature. Routledge. p. 129. ISBN 0-7100-6681-3.
2. Whyte, Christopher (1995). Gendering the nation: studies in modern Scottish literature. Edinburgh University Press. p. 216. ISBN 0-7486-0619-X.
3. Lycett, Andrew (12 March 2001). "Erotic heaven". New Statesman.
4. Nelson (2000) p.10
5. Henderson, Andrea K. (2008). Romanticism and the painful pleasures of modern life. Cambridge studies in Romanticism. Vol. 75. Cambridge University Press. p. 220. ISBN 978-0-521-88402-0.
6. Ashbee, Henry Spencer (1877). Index Librorum Prohibitorum: being Notes Bio- Biblio- Icono- graphical and Critical, on Curious and Uncommon Books. London: privately printed. p. 241.
7. British Library, Add MS 38807.
8. William White, ed. (1980). "'The Rodiad': Authorship and date". The Book Collector. 29. The Collector Ltd.: 429–430.
9. Nelson (2000) p.354
10. Godsall, Jon R. (2008). The Tangled Web: A Life of Sir Richard Burton. Troubador Publishing Ltd. p. 193. ISBN 978-1-906510-42-8.
11. Hammill, Faye (2009). "John Glassco, Canadian erotica and the 'Lying Chronicle'". In Anctil, Pierre; Loiselle, Andre; Rolfe, Christopher (eds.). Canada exposed. Canadian Studies. Vol. 20. Peter Lang. p. 286. ISBN 978-90-5201-548-4.

• Ashbee, Henry Spencer [Pisanus Fraxi] (1879). Centuria Librorum Absconditorum. London: privately printed. pp. 471–4.
• Nelson, James G. (2000). Publisher to the Decadents: Leonard Smithers in the Careers of Beardsley, Wilde, Dowson. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01974-3.