Bon-Mots of Samuel Foote and Theodore Hook, Selected by Walter Jerrold, with Grotesques by Aubrey Beardsley

Samuel Foote and Theodore Hook

Bon-Mots of Samuel Foote and Theodore Hook, Selected by Walter Jerrold, with Grotesques by Aubrey Beardsley

London:

J. M. Dent,

1894.

It was meant as a joke when, in the essay “Diminuendo” from The Works of Max Beerbohm (1896), the twenty-four-year-old Beerbohm bemoaned his outmodedness by announcing wearily, “I belong to the Beardsley period.” Ironically, many subsequent commentators have indeed viewed the 1890s as defined by Beardsley’s art. Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) and Beardsley were exact contemporaries with much in common. They were brilliant artists and visual wits who also wished to be famous for their writing, though Beerbohm had gone to Oxford, while Beardsley went straight from grammar school to clerking in an office. Beerbohm, too, was the more dedicated dandy, known for his impeccable dress. In this caricature for a Bon-Mots volume, Beardsley drew Beerbohm, whom he first met in 1894, in evening clothes, but with a head that resembled both a fetus—a recurring presence in Beardsley’s work—and a grotesquely large penis with a face.

From the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press