Frederick Hankey
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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""Hankey himself is a remarkable man, quite a study, he appears to me like a second de Sade without the intellect. He has given himself up body & soul to the erotic mania, thinks of nothing else, lives for nothing else."--Ahsbee in his personal journal |
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Frederick Hankey (1823, Corfu, Greece - 1882) was a British bibliophile.
Biography
He was the son of Sir Frederick Hankey {1800-1855). Retiring from the military as a Captain in the Guards in 1840, Hankey moves to Paris where he indulges in his passion of erotic literature, particularly of the sadistic variety. Ashbee compared him to Marquis de Sade "without the intellect". Hankey supplied sado-masochistic erotica to Swinburne, Richard Burton and Richard Monckton Milnes.
Grumpy Old Bookman notes:
- "The brothers Goncourt met Hankey in Paris, describing him in their journal (in translation) as 'a madman, a monster, one of those men who live on the edge of the abyss.' Through him, they wrote, they had a glimpse of 'a terrible side to a wealthy blasé aristocracy -- the English aristocracy -- who bring ferocious cruelty to love and whose licentiousness can only be aroused by the woman's sufferings.'
- Thus Hankey may, for all I know, single-handedly be responsible for the the coining of the French term 'le vice anglais'."
Notes
- 1868 L'École des biches ou Mœurs des petites dames de ce temps - Edmund Duponchel, Frederick Hankey & Alfred Bégis.
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