The Yellow Book
by BEARDSLEY, Aubrey Vincent, Lithograph
Early in 1894, Beardsley was appointed art editor of what he described as ‘a new literary and artistic quarterly’, the Yellow Book, which aimed to publish artists and writers who ‘cannot get their best stuff accepted in the conventional magazine’. The first issue appeared in April 1894 and, as had Salome, drew howls of rage from the press. This was a response to the sexual and social provocativeness of Beardsley’s work, and as the illustrator of Salome, he was in this respect linked with Wilde, that other great provocateur of the time. When on 5 April 1895, Wilde was arrested on a criminal charge of committing indecent acts, the subsequent scandal also brought down Beardsley. He was sacked from the Yellow Book on 19 April 1895 by its publisher John Lane, who had also published Salome, and he temporarily fled to France.
The picture shows the cover of the first issue of The Yellow Book, 1894.