More Beardsley ephemera, and more from the recently upgraded NYPL Digital Collections. These US ads for The Yellow Book date from late 1894 to early 1895, a couple of months before Oscar Wilde was arrested and Aubrey Beardsley had to leave the magazine despite having no connection with Wilde’s activities.
What’s most interesting for me about these ads is the small vignettes, two of which I’m sure I haven’t seen before. This suggests that there’s still material in the pages of The Yellow Book which has been overlooked despite the many books which collect Beardsley’s art. The Internet Archive has several volumes of the magazine but I’ve been daunted in the past by its thousands of pages of not-so-interesting Victorian prose. (The Savoy was the superior publication where quality of writing was concerned.) Maybe it’s time to take a deep breath and dive in.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Aubrey Beardsley archive
I remember back in the 1980’s in my early days of librarianship we had a set (v. 1-13 Apr. 1894 – Apr.1897 London, New York J. Lane [etc.]) of the Yellow Book out in the stacks, shelved with all the other periodicals! Fortunately, they have since been moved to Special Collections and are carefully guarded, as is right…but back in the day, I used to go out and look at them on break, make tracings, etc. It was like having a goldmine right outside my office door. Memory fades and is changed by desire, but I definitely remember them being chocked full of great drawings, ads, vignettes of all sort – well worth the time spent browsing…I don’t think I ever read a word.
…well, having looked at some issues of the Yellow Book online…much to my embarrassment chocked full is hardly an apt description, something like judiciously sprinkled would have been more accurate – and most of the images, except those by Beardsley, pretty uninspiring – so much for the follies of recollection – I must have somehow merged them with the pages of Typografische Monatsblatter which were shelved close by – blithering idiot I…and a good excuse to stop posting. Read only from here on.