Design for Title-page of Frances Burney, Evelina

Aubrey Beardsley

Design for Title-page of Frances Burney, Evelina

Ink on paper,

[1892].

Restraint, sobriety, and attention to period style were not qualities usually associated with Beardsley, but they were in his repertoire. Although he reveled in the unfettered exercise of imagination, he could be an excellent mimic when writing prose and an accurate copyist when drawing. His design for the title-page of a new edition of Evelina (1778) by Frances (“Fanny”) Burney (1752–1840), which included illustrations by a Victorian contemporary, W. Cubitt Cooke (1866–1951), showed careful study of how eighteenth-century volumes looked. Yet Beardsley still inserted touches in line with his own preoccupations, such as the bare-breasted figures flanking each side of the columns near the top, along with a central animal head that seemed less a trophy than a mounted skull. Sex and death were never far from his thoughts or from the work of his pen.

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