The Pearl
~ 1879 - 1880
The Pearl: A Magazine of Facetiae and Voluptuous Reading was a pornographic monthly magazine issued in London during the mid-Victorian period by William Lazenby.
It was closed down by the British authorities for violating contemporary standards of obscenity.
The Pearl ran for eighteen issues from July 1879 to December 1880, with two Christmas supplements. As an underground publication, it was limited to 150 copies and cost twenty-five pounds, which made it unusually expensive relative to comparable contemporaneous pornographic periodicals. The Christmas Annual, a crudely produced supplement that ran sixty pages, sold for three guineas. Only the special numbers contained illustrations.
The publisher and editor, William Lazenby, also wrote some of the content.
The magazine was distributed discreetly through mail order. Based on the cost and subject matter, the target audience appears to have been middle- and upper-class professionals.
The format of the magazine, in combining a mix of short stories, serial fiction, current events, and letters to the editor, parodied contemporary family magazines such as Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, which itself contained depictions of corporal punishment.
The general format of the periodical was to publish three serial erotic tales simultaneously, devoted to sex in high society, incest, and flagellation, respectively. The novels, six in total, were interspersed with limericks, hymns, odes, songs, facetious nursery rhymes, acrostic poems, parodies, faux advertisements, and fabricated letters to the editor.
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4 albums/16 artworks
Latest Update: January 25, 2025 -> Created a new page (16 artworks)
New English Library published three paperback volumes of highlights in the late 70s / early 80s (text only). An interesting read, and I learned some new (Victorian) words, plus alternative uses for a few I knew already. The best part was the filthy limericks. The one that has stayed with me (the books are stored in my lockup offsite) was: There was a young man of Santander, / Who tried hard to bugger a gander. / But the virtuous bird / Plugged its arse with a turd / And refused to such low tastes to pander.
Thank you so much for sharing the filthy limerickt that stayed with you.