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Most famous 19th century porno magazine
It is difficult to say what the difference is between erotica and pornography. Those who praise
sexual
manifestations in art will tend to use the former word, those who are perpetually disgusted by
all things carnal
will incline to savour the latter. To say of a magazine that it was "pornographic" is not
necessarily to condemn
it, nor, mutatis mutandis, is it to praise it. However, one publication popularly dubbed
pornographic in the
nineteenth century was "The Pearl" - which carried the happy subtitle,
Journal of Facetiae and Voluptuous
Reading. The journal appeared monthly between July 1879 and December 1886, and
declared as its imprint,
Oxford: Printed at the University Press. The entire run, in three volumes contained 36 obscene
coloured
lithographs - said by Ashbee to be of "vile execution." Six serialised novels were also included,
as well as short
stories, numerous ballads, poems, "gossip" notes and anecdotes, amounting to a total of five
hundred pages.
Some items, in translation, were simply stolen from elsewhere. "The Pearl" was
neither the first nor the last of
its kind; it was the most famous.