The Best of Beardsley, 1948 First Edition
Title: The Best of Beardsley
Author: Walker, R. A.
Publisher: Bodley Head
Publication date: 1948 (First Edition)
Format: Hardcover with dust-jacket (9 28.5cm x 22.5cm)
Pages: 21pp + 134 plates
Condition: Good
The Best of Beardsley Published by The Bodley Head 1948. Echoing Beardsley’s designs for the controversial 19th century periodical, The Yellow Book, the cover of the present volume reproduces Beardsley’s line block print “Ali Baba" made in 1897 for the cover of “The Fort Thieves”. Originally Elkin Mathews and John Lane, The Bodley Head was a partnership set up in 1887 by John Lane (1854–1925) and Elkin Mathews (1851–1921), to trade in antiquarian books in London. It took its name from a bust of Sir Thomas Bodley, the eponymist of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, above the shop door. Lane and Mathews began in 1894 to publish works of ‘stylish decadence’, including the notorious literary periodical The Yellow Book. The Yellow Book was a fashionable magazine which ran from 1894–97, taking its name from the notorious covering into which controversial French novels were placed at the time. It is, in fact, a ‘yellow book’ which corrupts Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray; this generally thought to be Joris-Karl Huysmans’s À rebours (1884). The founding principles of The Yellow Book were that literature and art should be treated independently and given equal status, and Aubrey Beardsley, illustrator of Wilde’s Salomé was appointed art editor. Indeed, when Wilde was arrested in 1895, there were rumours he had been carrying a yellow-bound book. Though this was actually Pierre Louÿs’s French novel Aphrodite, a confused crowd thought it was a copy of this magazine, and gathered to throw stones at the publishers’s offices.
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (21 August 1872 – 16 March 1898) was a popular and controversial British illustrator and author best known for his use of starkly contrasting and intricate black and white designs and for his caustic commentary on the society and the morality of his time of which he was a keen observer. His drawings, executed in black ink on white paper was clearly influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts. His subjects emphasized the beautiful, the grotesque, the decadent and the erotic. Beardsley was a leading figure in the Aesthetic Art Movement of the late 1800s which also included the works of Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Harry Clarke and James A. McNeill Whistler. Beardsley's contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau style and the poster movement was hugely significant, despite the brevity of his artistic career before his untimely death from tuberculosis at only 25.
Title: The Best of Beardsley
Author: Walker, R. A.
Publisher: Bodley Head
Publication date: 1948 (First Edition)
Format: Hardcover with dust-jacket (9 28.5cm x 22.5cm)
Pages: 21pp + 134 plates
Condition: Good
The Best of Beardsley Published by The Bodley Head 1948. Echoing Beardsley’s designs for the controversial 19th century periodical, The Yellow Book, the cover of the present volume reproduces Beardsley’s line block print “Ali Baba" made in 1897 for the cover of “The Fort Thieves”. Originally Elkin Mathews and John Lane, The Bodley Head was a partnership set up in 1887 by John Lane (1854–1925) and Elkin Mathews (1851–1921), to trade in antiquarian books in London. It took its name from a bust of Sir Thomas Bodley, the eponymist of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, above the shop door. Lane and Mathews began in 1894 to publish works of ‘stylish decadence’, including the notorious literary periodical The Yellow Book. The Yellow Book was a fashionable magazine which ran from 1894–97, taking its name from the notorious covering into which controversial French novels were placed at the time. It is, in fact, a ‘yellow book’ which corrupts Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray; this generally thought to be Joris-Karl Huysmans’s À rebours (1884). The founding principles of The Yellow Book were that literature and art should be treated independently and given equal status, and Aubrey Beardsley, illustrator of Wilde’s Salomé was appointed art editor. Indeed, when Wilde was arrested in 1895, there were rumours he had been carrying a yellow-bound book. Though this was actually Pierre Louÿs’s French novel Aphrodite, a confused crowd thought it was a copy of this magazine, and gathered to throw stones at the publishers’s offices.
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (21 August 1872 – 16 March 1898) was a popular and controversial British illustrator and author best known for his use of starkly contrasting and intricate black and white designs and for his caustic commentary on the society and the morality of his time of which he was a keen observer. His drawings, executed in black ink on white paper was clearly influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts. His subjects emphasized the beautiful, the grotesque, the decadent and the erotic. Beardsley was a leading figure in the Aesthetic Art Movement of the late 1800s which also included the works of Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Harry Clarke and James A. McNeill Whistler. Beardsley's contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau style and the poster movement was hugely significant, despite the brevity of his artistic career before his untimely death from tuberculosis at only 25.
Title: The Best of Beardsley
Author: Walker, R. A.
Publisher: Bodley Head
Publication date: 1948 (First Edition)
Format: Hardcover with dust-jacket (9 28.5cm x 22.5cm)
Pages: 21pp + 134 plates
Condition: Good
The Best of Beardsley Published by The Bodley Head 1948. Echoing Beardsley’s designs for the controversial 19th century periodical, The Yellow Book, the cover of the present volume reproduces Beardsley’s line block print “Ali Baba" made in 1897 for the cover of “The Fort Thieves”. Originally Elkin Mathews and John Lane, The Bodley Head was a partnership set up in 1887 by John Lane (1854–1925) and Elkin Mathews (1851–1921), to trade in antiquarian books in London. It took its name from a bust of Sir Thomas Bodley, the eponymist of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, above the shop door. Lane and Mathews began in 1894 to publish works of ‘stylish decadence’, including the notorious literary periodical The Yellow Book. The Yellow Book was a fashionable magazine which ran from 1894–97, taking its name from the notorious covering into which controversial French novels were placed at the time. It is, in fact, a ‘yellow book’ which corrupts Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray; this generally thought to be Joris-Karl Huysmans’s À rebours (1884). The founding principles of The Yellow Book were that literature and art should be treated independently and given equal status, and Aubrey Beardsley, illustrator of Wilde’s Salomé was appointed art editor. Indeed, when Wilde was arrested in 1895, there were rumours he had been carrying a yellow-bound book. Though this was actually Pierre Louÿs’s French novel Aphrodite, a confused crowd thought it was a copy of this magazine, and gathered to throw stones at the publishers’s offices.
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (21 August 1872 – 16 March 1898) was a popular and controversial British illustrator and author best known for his use of starkly contrasting and intricate black and white designs and for his caustic commentary on the society and the morality of his time of which he was a keen observer. His drawings, executed in black ink on white paper was clearly influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts. His subjects emphasized the beautiful, the grotesque, the decadent and the erotic. Beardsley was a leading figure in the Aesthetic Art Movement of the late 1800s which also included the works of Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Harry Clarke and James A. McNeill Whistler. Beardsley's contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau style and the poster movement was hugely significant, despite the brevity of his artistic career before his untimely death from tuberculosis at only 25.