Keynotes

George Egerton

Keynotes

London:

Elkin Mathews and John Lane,

1893.

George Egerton’s copy, inscribed to John Lane, in embroidered cloth wrapper.

With No.17. Before the Bodley Head settled upon green cloth for Keynotes and cloth bindings for all books subsequently in the “Keynotes Series” (many of which were designed by Beardsley, before his dismissal amid the moral panic over the Wilde trials), it experimented with paper wrappers. The front cover and title-page for Keynotes were identical and reflected humorously Beardsley’s own preoccupations—Pierrots, phallic poles and instruments, unnaturally tiny feet, hands reaching for genitalia, etc.—more than anything Mary Chavelita Dunne, a.k.a. “George Egerton” had written. Later, she got her own back in the most literal way, presenting to John Lane a copy with a cover she had embroidered herself, overriding Beardsley’s intentions. For Beardsley’s masturbating-woman-on-a-stick, she substituted a floral design alluding to her Irish heritage. She kept, however, Beardsley’s notion of a key with her initials woven in, decorating the back cover with her sewn interpretation of it.

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