Design for the Key of George Egerton, Keynotes

Aubrey Beardsley

Design for the Key of George Egerton, Keynotes

Ink and pencil on paper, touched with Chinese white,

[1893].

Cordelia Mary Lane Brimacombe Day, Scrapbook, 1892–c. 1899. Cordelia Mary Lane Brimacombe Day Collection of Bodley Head Books, Gift of Sheila Ann Hegy to the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection.

With No.16. Only recently was Beardsley’s original drawing of the “key” for “George Egerton’s” volume of short stories discovered. It lay unnoticed for decades in an album kept by the niece of John Lane, co-proprietor of the Bodley Head firm that published Keynotes, from whom she received it as a young girl. Beardsley’s idea to incorporate the author’s initials (“G. E.,” in this case) in the pseudo-antique key proved not only brilliant, but durable. When Keynotes unexpectedly sold thousands of copies—helped by its shocking theme of sexual autonomy for women and by Beardsley’s equally shocking and much-parodied cover and title-page, with a female figure grabbing her crotch—the Bodley Head launched its “Keynotes Series” for connoisseurs of the newest, most daring literary fiction. Beardsley received the commission to design each successive volume, and he branded the spine and back cover with a different key, using its author’s initials.

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