Sade greatly influenced Romantic and Decadent authors, such as Charles-Pierre Baudelaire, Gustave Flaubert, Algernon Swinburne, and Rachilde.

The mid-to late nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of certain attitudes and practices that together constitute the antecedents of contemporary Pagan and Magical religions, Algernon Swinburne (1) was exhibiting a 'paganism as an attitude of mind' (2) from the 1860s onwards, the Theosophical Society (1875) and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (1888) (3) were founded, and William James was writing about the 'eccentric and spooky dark side of religion'.

) A coterie of British pornographers, including the Richard Burton, Richard Monckton-Milnes (Lord Houghton), Henry Edward Vaux Bellamy, James Campbell, Charles Algernon Swinburne, and Edward Sellon, belonged to the Royal Geographic Society and the Anthropological Society of London, both of which were concerned with the documentation of other places and other people.