The Pearl: A Monthly Journal of Facetiae and Voluptuous Reading (Complete 18 Volumes)


Book Description

The merry month of May has always been famous for its propitious influence over the voluptuous senses of the fairer sex. I will tell you two or three little incidents which occurred to me in May, 1878, when I went to visit my cousins in Sussex, or as I familiarly call them, the She-Noodles, for the sport they afforded me at various times. My uncle's is a nice country residence, standing in large grounds of its own, and surrounded by small fields of arable and pasture land, interspersed by numerous interesting copses, through which run footpaths and shady walks, where you are not likely to meet anyone in a month. I shall not trouble my readers with the name of the locality, or they may go pleasure hunting for themselves. Well, to go on, these cousins consisted of Annie, Sophie, and Polly, beside their brother Frank, who, at nineteen, was the eldest, the girls being, respectively, eighteen, sixteen, and fifteen. After dinner, the first day of my arrival, paterfamilias and mamma both indulged in a snooze in their armchair, whilst us boys and girls (I was the same age as Frank) took a stroll in the grounds. I attached myself more particularly to cousin Annie, a finely developed blonde, with deep blue eyes, pouting red lips, and a full heaving bosom, which to me looked like a perfect volcano of smothered desires. Frank was a very indolent fellow, who loved to smoke his cigar, and expected his sisters, who adored him, to sit by his side, reading some of the novels of the day, or tell him their love secrets, &c. This was by far too tame an amusement for me, and as I had not been there for nearly three years, I requested Annie to show me the improvements in the grounds before we went in to tea, saying to Frank, banteringly, "I suppose, old fellow, you're too, lazy, and would prefer your sister taking me round?" "I'm too comfortable; lazy is an ugly word, Walter, but the fact is, Soph is just reading a most interesting book, and I can't leave it," he replied; "besides, sissie is quite as well, or better qualified than I am to show off the grounds. I never notice anything."




A Study of Erotic Literature in England


Book Description

The present work fills a gap as it attempts to offer a history of erotic literature published in the United Kingdom. The word Study in the title is perhaps a bit exaggerated as the material is largely taken from the now well known bibliographies by Pisanus Fraxi (Henry Spencer Ashbee) and quotations from the books themselves. The time line is WW II. Who was the author? He may have been Charles Reginald Dawes (1879-1964) who is supposed to have written (but not published) a text of this or a similar title. His profession or his activities are not known - he once called himself a writer but library catalogues credit him only with two publications: The Marquis de Sade (Paris 1927) and Retif de la Bretonne (London 1946, privately printed). He may have been a popular writer under pseudonyms, though. Dawes owned a good erotica collection which he willed to the British Museum Library; that would explain why the author of this Study - if he was Dawes - could quote freely from erotic texts which only few of his contemporaries would have had available. The main merits of this book are that the author was thoroughly familiar with English (and French) erotic literature and that he put his material in chronological order and in context. The editor added a number of references, illustrations and indices of personal names and titles to facilitate navigation.




Clandestine Erotic Fiction in English 1800–1930


Book Description

This work offers bibliographical descriptions of all printings of erotic fiction in English issued clandestinely during the period 1800-1930. By 'clandestine' is meant books whose publishers and printers attempt to hide their identities, usually by offering title pages whose misleading places and dates of publication may shock and amuse, but which always aim to mystify. Using internal and external evidence, an attempt is made to establish who were the printers, booksellers and publishers, English and Continental, involved in this trade. The printing families or 'groups' into which a large percentage of the material falls are classified, accompanied by illustrations which identify the main printing characteristics ('house styles') of the groups. Bibliographical descriptions follow a checklist of clandestine catalogues; these provide valuable evidence for dating, pricing and 'sales pitch' and information on items of which no copies can now be traced. The work concludes with a series of appendices which provide significant external evidence, and three indexes: of themes, titles and names. Peter Mendes' original research builds on and significantly extends the essential pioneer work of the Victorian collector and bibliographer H.S. Ashbee ('Pisanus Fraxi').




Obscene Modernism


Book Description

During the period 1900-1940 novels and poems in the UK and US were subject to strict forms of censorship and control because of their representation of sex and sexuality. At the same time, however, writers were more interested than ever before in writing about sex and excrement, incorporating obscene slang words into literary texts, and exploring previously uncharted elements of the modern psyche. This book explores the far-reaching literary, legal and philosophical consequences of this historical conflict between law and literature. Alongside the famous prosecutions of D. H. Lawrence's The Rainbow and James Joyce's Ulysses huge numbers of novels and poems were altered by publishers and printers because of concerns about prosecution. Far from curtailing the writing of obscenity, however, censorship seemed to stimulate writers to explore it further. During the period covered by this book novels and poems became more experimentally obscene, and writers were intensely interested in discussing the author's rights to free speech, the nature of obscenity and the proper parameters of literature. Literature, seen as a dangerous form of corruption by some, was identified with sexual liberation by others. While legislators tried to protect UK and US borders from obscene literature, modernist publishers and writers gravitated abroad, a development that prompted writers to defend the international rights of banned authors and books. While the period 1900-1940 was one of the most heavily policed in the history of literature, it was also the time when the parameters of literature opened up and writers seriously questioned the rights of nation states to control the production and dissemination of literature.







The Palgrave Handbook of Steam Age Gothic


Book Description

By the early 1830s the old school of Gothic literature was exhausted. Late Romanticism, emphasising as it did the uncertainties of personality and imagination, gave it a new lease of life. Gothic—the literature of disturbance and uncertainty—now produced works that reflected domestic fears, sexual crimes, drug filled hallucinations, the terrible secrets of middle class marriage, imperial horror at alien invasion, occult demonism and the insanity of psychopaths. It was from the 1830s onwards that the old gothic castle gave way to the country house drawing room, the dungeon was displaced by the sewers of the city and the villains of early novels became the familiar figures of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dracula, Dorian Grey and Jack the Ripper. After the death of Prince Albert (1861), the Gothic became darker, more morbid, obsessed with demonic lovers, blood sucking ghouls, blood stained murderers and deranged doctors. Whilst the gothic architecture of the Houses of Parliament and the new Puginesque churches upheld a Victorian ideal of sobriety, Christianity and imperial destiny, Gothic literature filed these new spaces with a dread that spread like a plague to America, France, Germany and even Russia. From 1830 to 1914, the period covered by this volume, we saw the emergence of the greats of Gothic literature and the supernatural from Edgar Allan Poe to Emily Bronte, from Sheridan Le Fanu to Bram Stoker and Robert Louis Stevenson. Contributors also examine the fin-de-siècle dreamers of decadence such as Arthur Machen, M P Shiel and Vernon Lee and their obsession with the occult, folklore, spiritualism, revenants, ghostly apparitions and cosmic annihilation. This volume explores the period through the prism of architectural history, urban studies, feminism, 'hauntology' and much more. 'Horror', as Poe teaches us, 'is the soul of the plot'.




The Publishers Weekly


Book Description







The Pearl


Book Description

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.