Rejected illustration by Aubrey Beardsley for front cover of Yellow Book, Volume V.

Title: Rejected illustration by Aubrey Beardsley for front cover of Yellow Book, Volume V.
Date: 1896
Publisher: Bodley Head Publishing House.
Contributor: Daren Kay, Community Curator, Queer the Pier, Brighton Museum & Art Gallery.
Format: JPEG of black and white pen and ink illustration created for book cover.
Type: Illustration for book cover
Creator: Aubrey Beardsley
Spatial Coverage: Brighton
Language: English
Relation: Yellow Book, Queer the Pier exhibition.
Rights Holder: Brighton Pavilion & Museums.
Rights: All rights reserved by Royal Pavilion & Museums.; Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Temporal Coverage: Nineteenth Century

Description: On show in the Queer the Pier exhibition (2020 - 2022) at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery.

Proposed black and white pen and ink illustration created by Aubrey Beardsley (1877-1898) for the cover of the Yellow Book magazine (1894-1897).

Digitised image is provided by Royal Pavilion & Museums, who currently hold the original object.

Daren Kay, Community Curator: Born in Brighton in 1872, Beardsley (1872 - 1898) is best known for his erotic illustrations for a number of avant-garde publications like the Yellow Book - a fashionable magazine that ran from 1894-1897 that took its name from the covering controversial French novels were wrapped in at the time. Tainted by his association with Oscar Wilde (who was apparently carrying a copy of the Yellow Book when he was arrested for sodomy in 1895), Beardsley was fired as Art Editor of the Yellow Book.

His original illustration for Volume V (on show here) was replaced by that of another artist. Beardsley's sexually explicit art work has earned him a place in the heart of the queer community and maintained his popularity with generations of gender non-conforming and bisexual people.

Subject: persecution; Oscar Wilde; Aubrey Beardsley; Yellow Book; Illustration; avant-garde; black and white illustration; gender non-conforming; Queer the Pier; illustration; erotic illustration; bisexual; sodomy

Rejected illustration for front cover of Yellow Book Volume V by Aubrey Beardsley

Rejected illustration by Aubrey Beardsley for front cover of Yellow Book, Volume V.

Accessibility Options