The Toilet of Salome, in A Portfolio of Aubrey Beardsley’s Drawings Illustrating “Salome” by Oscar Wilde

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Creator

Aubrey Beardsley

Title

The Toilet of Salome, in A Portfolio of Aubrey Beardsley’s Drawings Illustrating “Salome” by Oscar Wilde

Coverage

[London:

Publisher

John Lane,

Date

1906].

Description

Eleven years after peremptorily firing Beardsley from a post he held for only four issues, as art editor of The Yellow Book, John Lane continued finding ways to profit from works such as the Salome drawings by issuing them as a portfolio. The irony was a double one, as in Spring 1895 Lane had also withdrawn all of Wilde’s works from sale to distance his Bodley Head firm from the disgrace that attended Wilde’s prosecution for “gross indecency.” By 1906, however, with Beardsley having died in 1898 and Wilde in 1900, interest in both figures was on the rise, and Salome was ripe for resurrection. Separate publication of Beardsley’s images worked well, as they were never illustrations per se. The Toilet of Salome, for instance, depicted a scene that did not exist in the play—one filled with naked androgynes and a standing fetus wrapped in a hanky, along with hands clutching at genitals, grasping phallic poles, and daintily wielding powder puffs.

Source

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