Miss Coote's Confession was first serialised between 1879 and 1880 in a magazine, The Pearl, published by the Society of Vice, which was later shut down by the authorities for publishing rude and obscene literature. The confession takes the form of a series of letters from the now elderly Miss Coote to a friend, outlining through a series of reminiscences, how she became initiated into the Victorian world of BDSM and lesbian sexuality, initially through household discipline and later through imaginative sex games at her boarding school. When as an adult she sets up her own household, Miss Coote creates her own punishment room, and sets out to find both willing and unwilling victims on whom to ply her birch rods. As her sadistic lust grows, she enlists a ring of like-minded female flagellants to form a secret society devoted to bondage and whipping. Fast paced, shocking and outrageously voluptuous, Miss Coote shatters every taboo, both of her own era and of ours.