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eBook Category: Erotica
eBook Description: The "Other" Classic Victorian Magazine of Erotica. No one wrote erotica better than the Victorians. Classic celebrations of the senses like Fanny Hill, The Way of a Man with a Maid, My Secret Life and Venus in Furs just flowed from their pens. The most celebrated erotic journal of the Victorian era was the justly famous, The Pearl (available from Renaissance E Books), whose once banned pages introduced many an erotic masterpiece to the world. The Pearl's fame is rivaled only by that of its successor. For, according to the apparently authoritative and comprehensive Introduction by Antoinette Hillman-Straus, when The Pearl went out of business, a new publication rose to fill the gap, The Oyster. Displaying a totally uninhibited and delightfully erotic style, the Oyster was written anonymously and privately distributed. The Oyster was largely forgotten until an obscure edition was rediscovered in the 1980s, in the wake of the success of revived editions of The Pearl. Like its predecessor, the revive Oyster went on to become a bestseller in our time, a classic work whose style and descriptions are so frank they still have the power to shock and compel 21st century readers.

eBook Publisher: Renaissance E Books/Sizzler, Published: 2006
Fictionwise Release Date: June 2006

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [122 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [135 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [101 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [825 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [115 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [127 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [169 KB] , hiebook (KML) [287 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [163 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [95 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [117 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [159 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [150 KB]
Words: 34774
Reading time: 99-139 min.
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THE PEARL was perhaps the most famous of all underground magazines which flourished in Britain throughout the mid-Victorian years. The first issue was published in London in July, 1879 and eighteen editions were printed until its sudden closure in December, 1880.

Although this monthly 'journal of facetiae and voluptuous reading' was given a brazen imprimatur of 'Oxford: at the University Press', in actual fact the magazine was brought out privately by a mysterious individual named Lazenby who--according to G. Legman, that indefatigable researcher and writer on erotica--published and indeed wrote much of the content under the pseudonym of D. Cameron. Another contributor, says Legman, was the noted journalist and war correspondent George Augustus Sala, but the identities of the other correspondents will probably never be revealed.

After the sudden disappearance of The Pearl, other similar magazines were quickly produced to take its place in the highly efficient subterranean marketing system that existed throughout the 1880s and 90s for the distribution of forbidden literature. Lazenby/Cameron offered The Cremorne whilst others of the same ilk that flourished during this period included The Boudoir and The Oyster.

And it is from The Oyster, one of the successors to the much imitated Pearl, that the novel in this volume is taken. Sir Andrew Scott began his reminiscences of his schooldays in an earlier issue (reprinted in The Pearl, Volume Three, New English Library) and this longer extract is very much in the same vein. Although prurient, it is well worth noting that like all the other material from The Oyster the novelette eschews sadomasochistic behaviour, flagellation and the even grosser sexual perversions such as pederasty and incest that cropped up regularly in many other such publications.

Whilst little attempt is made by our unknown author to write in any serious depth, and although the characters are at best two-dimensional, there is yet a pungent, lively spirit and a bawdy vitality in the writing which is rarely found in collections of popular erotica from this rather stuffy period of British history.

Certainly there can be little doubt that Sir Andrew Scott thoroughly enjoyed penning his memoir of youthful sexual frolics even if the apparent ease of finding ready and willing partners somewhat stretches our credulity. Perhaps we should heed the words of a more famous scribe of the time, Oscar Wilde, who once commented that: 'Memory is the diary we all carry about with us, even if it chronicles events that never happened and could not possibly have happened.' Yet it may be wrong to dismiss the narrative totally as mere boastful fantasising, despite the extraordinary ease of conquest displayed. Whilst a far stronger taboo on sex before marriage then existed, coupled of course with a very real fear of unwanted pregnancy, we know full well that many Victorian ladies were far less strait-laced than usually depicted either then or now. Amongst the upper crust, to take a well-documented sample, there was often much flitting between bedrooms at country house weekend parties. Conversely, in all large British cities throughout the mid to late nineteenth century there were a shameful number of prostitutes (including a high number of under-age girls and boys driven to the brothels by abject hunger and often appalling poverty) to quench the sexual appetites of the lonely and the repressed.

So there may well be more than a kernel of truth in the narrative even if Sir Andrew has doubtless embellished his personal account of sexual discovery! He writes, it should be remembered, not as a social historian but primarily for his own enjoyment, and perhaps his account of how he came to write his memoir is quite true, and he did indeed compose the story sitting at a writing desk in the sumptuous library of his friend, Sir Lionel T--(whose name, incidentally, crops up in previous issues of The Oyster). One can only hazard a guess as to the identity of this gentleman, but he could well be Sir Lionel Trapes (1826-1908), a high-ranking Treasury official and patron of the arts who was a member of the circle, that included 'Pisanus Fraxi', alias H. Spencer Ashbee, the doyen of all collectors of erotic and gallant literature.

Scott, then, writes to titillate and amuse and not to instruct, and it must be admitted that he writes with some genuine style, keeping the simple story moving as briskly as he can between the frequent bouts of sexual grappling. He appears to have been a man of straightforward sexual taste although, somewhat unusual for this age, he regards oral sex quite equitably and takes no joy whatsoever from the idea of giving or receiving corporal 'punishment' in the bedroom.

The Oyster continued to thrive until 1889. The last recorded issue just preceded the first public news about the notorious Cleveland Street scandal, a cause celebre that involved the exposure of a high-class homosexual brothel where Post Office messenger boys were encouraged to participate in sexual acts with some extremely well-known personages. Indeed, it has been suggested that the demise of the magazine was not unconnected with the hasty flight to France of Lord Arthur Somerset, a close friend and equerry to the Prince of Wales, who was heavily implicated in the Cleveland Street affair. Lord Arthur and Lord Euston were just two of a raffish group of men-about-town who were well known for their varied and robust sexual proclivities.

Other magazines appeared at regular intervals and these along with The Pearl and The Oyster provided a platform of resistance to the suffocating, guilt-ridden climate in which they appeared. They set themselves firmly against the notion that sexuality was an area over which the Establishment should exercise a stringent, rigid control and this led to a more sceptical, questioning attitude which in turn brought about the more relaxed and understanding liberal philosophy that by and large exists today.

The writers in these 'underground' magazines of our great-grandparents show that even during the stem days of Bowdlerism, when even piano legs were covered for the sake of a false and imaginary 'decency', there was still a fierce questioning of taboos, and there existed a simple desire to explore frankly the actual mechanics of sexuality.

There may be some who question the need to produce and to receive explicit works, but the modern acceptance of the view that adults must in general be allowed to read whatever they desire has its origins in such material as is produced in this jolly little book.

The identity of Sir Andrew Scott and others of his ilk will remain unknown. Although they should not, perhaps, be regarded as pioneers of freedom of expression, it is nonetheless most probable that they wrote purely for pleasure, and not merely for financial gain. Even so, it would be naive to suppose that the question of payment never crossed their minds. It should be pointed out, however, that whilst The Pearl, The Oyster, and other similar magazines were strictly illegal, there is little evidence of a rich black market for pornography, although there were doubtless several printers who would gladly have risked prosecution to print saucy material on an undercover basis. Lazenby and Cameron certainly made money out of publishing The Pearl, but what of the writers such as Scott? He writes with some erudition and is by no means averse to slipping in the occasional French, Italian or even Latin phrase, or regaling the reader with bouts of philosophising in between the more robust pieces of action. Some readers will recognise in his opening paragraphs the Platonic argument taken from the prologue of The Republic about the advantages and disadvantages of old age.

Without any genuine hard evidence to back up one's supposition, only mere conjecture can be made as to Scott's true identity. In the manner of the born gossip, he tantalisingly gives only the Christian names of his friends, most of whom appear to be titled. Indeed, he himself may well have been one of the idle, wealthy young men who took morning rides down Rotten Row, enjoyed huge lunches and lazy afternoons at their clubs and spent their evenings either at formal dinner parties or at the already popular music halls and theatres where hordes of ladies of pleasure awaited these sybaritic young drones.

My own view is that Scott was probably a writer. Not necessarily a professional hack on one of the fledgling popular newspapers that were surfacing throughout this era, but an occasional contributor to one of the many magazines and reviews that flourished during the 1880s. His apparent lack of interest in bondage and flagellation would appear to rule out George Augustus Sala, but he was most certainly a member of a similar semi-leisured circle willing and eager to spin out a tale for the amusement of his friends.

Copies of these and other works have fortunately survived to delight and amuse us as well as to provide an unusual and unconventional insight into the manners and mores of a vanished world, the reverse side to the coin of iron-clad respectability which appeared to characterise British society some hundred years ago.

Antoinette Hillman-Strauss

March, 1995