Cover with an illustration of Aubrey Beardsley
The Yellow Book was an English magazine for art and literature, published in London from 1894 to 1897 quarterly and during that time one of the leading publications in this field. The magazine was published by The Bodley Head of Elkin Mathews and John Lane, later only by John Lane, and was edited by Henry Harland, originally from America.
The magazine was associated with the then-moving movements of aestheticism and decadentism, where Oscar Wilde was one of the leading figures. However, wild himself was excluded from publication because of the controversy that arose around him. The magazine published a wide range of literary and artistic expressions in the form of short stories, poems, essays, critics, illustrations and reproductions of paintings.
The first editor of the magazine was Aubrey Beardsley, who would also be responsible for the color of the cover. The remarkable yellow color called associations with the French literature from that period and thus again with Oscar Wilde. This controversial writer mentions in his decadent novel The Picture of Dorian Gray a book with a yellow cover. It is about the influential French novel À rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans for the movement of decadentism. Beardsley, who had previously contributed to the illustrations for Wildes play Salomé, was fired under pressure from public opinion. He then started working as art director of the literary magazine The Savoy.
Many at the time and some still respected artists contributed to the magazine, including Charles Conder, William Rothenstein, John Singer Sargent, Walter Sickert and Philip Wilson Steer. The literary area was co-worked by, among others, Max Beerbohm, Arnold Bennett, Baron Corvo, Ernest Dowson, George Gissing, Henry James, Edmund Gosse, Richard Le Gallienne, Charlotte Mew, Arthur Symons, Herbert George Wells and William Butler Yeats. >
All 13 parts can be viewed at www.archive.org
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