The Climax

This is an illustration to “Salome” by Oscar Wilde, published in “The Studio,” Vol. 1, No.1, 1893.

In 1907, John Lane issued a portfolio of designs that Aubrey Beardsley created in 1894 for the first British edition of Salome. Oscar Wilde’s play had been written in French in 1891 then translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas. Several of the images Beardsley submitted were judged to be too erotic to publish and either altered or omitted. All were, however, included in the 1907 set. The present image of Salom� preparing to kiss the severed head of John the Baptist appeared in the 1894 book opposite page 64.

Aubrey Beardsley’s distinctive black and white drawings for Oscar Wilde’s Salom�, published in 1894, brought him extraordinary notoriety whilst still in his early twenties. His work for the periodical The Yellow Book confirmed his position as the most innovative illustrator of the day, but as a result of the hostile moralistic outcry that followed the arrest and trial of Oscar Wilde in early 1895, John Lane and other publishers panicked and dropped Beardsley. After that, almost the only publisher who would use his drawings was Leonard Smithers.