Illustrations in “The Pay of the Pied Piper,” in The Brighton Grammar School Annual Entertainment at The Dome on Wednesday, Dec. 19, 1888: Programme & Book of Words

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Creator

Aubrey Beardsley

Title

Illustrations in “The Pay of the Pied Piper,” in The Brighton Grammar School Annual Entertainment at The Dome on Wednesday, Dec. 19, 1888: Programme & Book of Words

Coverage

Brighton:

Publisher

Tucknott’s Steam Printing Works,

Date

1888.

Description

Beardsley’s desire for literary fame equaled his ambitions in art. From boyhood onwards, he was writing poetry and prose. But he was attracted, too, to the world of the theatre. At age eighteen— a time when he described himself unflatteringly in a letter to A. W. King (1855–1922), his former housemaster at the Brighton Grammar School, as possessing “a vile constitution, a sallow face and sunken eyes, long red hair, a shuffling gait and a stoop”—he had a one-act comedy performed at the Brighton Pavilion. Even before this, he had appeared to acclaim in school theatricals and for one of those, an 1888 production of The Pay of the Pied Piper (based on “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”), he also supplied drawings that filled the accompanying booklet. At this point, however, we see that he was more adept at depicting the chubby backsides of rats than the bodies of human children.

Source

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