Sadopaideia, published in 1907, is a pornographic novel whose full title runs: Sadopaideia: Being the Experiences of Cecil Prendergast Undergraduate of the University of Oxford Shewing How he was Led Through the Pleasant Paths of Masochism to the Supreme joys of Sadism. The imprint is “Ashantee of Edinburgh,” probably Charles Carrington in Paris. Grove Press later issued it in the United States as GP-421. Two volumes follow one man from the bottom to the top: masochistic training first, then sadistic mastery. The text is anonymous. Anthony Storr attributed it to Algernon Charles Swinburne. That attribution is the kind of guess often made about clandestine Victorian and Edwardian flagellation porn. It is not settled.
The title mimics a scholarly book. It joins sado- to the Greek paideia, education, and treats erotic cruelty and suffering as a course of study for Cecil Prendergast, an Oxford undergraduate. He is a university student, an adult, not a child. Before leather clubs wrote roles into house rules, underground novels already staged the move from bottom to top as an initiation. Carrington’s Paris trade specialized in English erotica that Britain would not print, often under a fake place of publication. “Ashantee of Edinburgh” fits that camouflage.
In the history of BDSM literature, Sadopaideia is the classic narrative of masochism turning into sadism. Across two volumes it records an education in taking erotic pain and in giving it. The word “BDSM” did not exist yet. The book was already being named beside the better-known English SM porn.
