The Yellow Book: An Illustrated Quarterly

Title: The Yellow Book: An Illustrated Quarterly

Author: Harland, Henry, ed.

Publication: London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane, 1894.

Description: Complete thirteen-volume set of the art and literary periodical "The Yellow Book" (1894-1897), five volumes of which are famously illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley. Later issue, without the advertisements at the rear. Bound in publisher's binding of full yellow cloth, with lettering and decoration in black. Bindings with mild soiling and sunning and text with scattered foxing. 13 volumes; 8.25 x 6.75 inches. Very Good. An attractive and collectible copy.

At the time, salacious French publications were wrapped in yellow, and the "Yellow Book" was so titled and colored to suggest that the contents of the periodical were risque, though the editor John Lane was in fact careful to remove controversial content. "The Yellow Book" includes contributions from a number of women writers and illustrators, such as Ella D'Arcy, Ethel Colburn Mayne, George Egerton, Charlotte Mew, Rosamund Marriott Watson, Ada Leverson, Ethel Reed, Netta Syrett, Mabel Syrett and Nellie Syrett. Other literary contributors included Henry James, Edmund Gosse, Richard Le Gallienne, Max Beerbohm, Kenneth Grahame, H. G. Wells, and W. B. Yeats. Aubrey Beardsley, along with Oscar Wilde, was a leading figure of the Aesthetic Movement. Beardsley was fired from his position as art editor of "The Yellow Book" after newspapers falsely reported that Oscar Wilde was carrying a copy of "The Yellow Book" at the time of his arrest for "gross indecency" in 1895.