The Victorian Underground 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.