The Dancing Faun

Florence Farr

The Dancing Faun

London:

Elkin Mathews and John Lane,

1894.

Ella D’Arcy’s copy, presented to her by John Lane.

Watching his sister, Mabel, throw over her teaching position and forge a stage career helped to make Beardsley sympathetic to women performers’ struggles. One contemporary who managed to succeed as both an actress and author was Florence Farr (1860–1917). Her novel about Society and the theatre, The Dancing Faun, was the second volume in the Bodley Head’s “Keynotes Series.” Despite Beardsley’s appreciation of talented professional women, he could not resist doing to Farr what he had done to “George Egerton”—i.e., creating a cover and title-page that bore no relation to the text, but instead represented self-indulgence in depicting what amused him. That meant drawing a faun with a head that was a caricature of J. M. Whistler’s, holding its leg as though grasping a huge, furry penis. This copy belonged to Ella D’Arcy (1857–1937), who wrote a “Keynotes Series” volume and was sub-editor of The Yellow Book.

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