The Yellow Book

He obtained works by such artists as Charles Conder, William Rothenstein, John Singer Sargent, Walter Sickert, and Philip Wilson Steer.

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the "yellow book" is understood by critics to be À rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans, a representative work of Parisian decadence that heavily influenced British aesthetes like Beardsley.

Considering the later date of this drama's debut, 1895, than that of The Picture of Dorian Gray, it can be inferred that it is perhaps more likely that Mrs Cheveley's own allusion is to the actual "Yellow Book" magazine, as its publication began in 1894.

Soon after Wilde was arrested Beardsley was dismissed as the periodical's art editor; his post taken over by the publisher, John Lane, assisted by another artist, Patten Wilson.

Although critics have contended that the quality of its contents declined after Beardsley left and that The Yellow Book became a vehicle for promoting the work of Lane's authors, a remarkably high standard in both art and literature was maintained until the periodical ceased publication in early 1897.

Perhaps indicative of The Yellow Book's past significance in literary circles of its day is a reference to it in a fictional piece thirty-three years after it ceased publication.

The Yellow Book differed from other periodicals in that it was issued clothbound, made a strict distinction between the literary and art contents (only in one or two instances were these connected), did not include serial fiction, and contained no advertisements except publishers' lists.

The Yellow Book's brilliant colour immediately associated the periodical with illicit French novels – an anticipation, many thought, of the scurrilous content inside.

Yet generally The Yellow Book's first list of contributors bespoke a non-radical, typically conservative collection of authors: Edmund Gosse, Walter Crane, Frederick Leighton, and Henry James among others.

[7] The Yellow Book owed much of its reputation to Aubrey Beardsley, who, despite John Lane's remonstrations, repeatedly attempted to shock public opinion.

Lane's scrutiny of Beardsley's drawings suggests that he wished The Yellow Book to be a publication only slightly associated with the Decadence's shocking aesthetic.

Beardsley's artwork was perhaps the most controversial aspect of The Yellow Book; his style was thought to be highly unnatural and grotesque, and he was openly caricatured in contemporary periodicals.

[citation needed] In response, Beardsley cleverly published two drawings stylistically divergent to his own under the names Phillip Broughton and Albert Foschter in The Yellow Book's third volume.

Its variegated array of contributors associated The Yellow Book with the "impressionism, feminism, naturalism, dandyism, symbolism and classicism [which] all participate[d] in the politics of decadence in the nineties".

[17] Interviewed before the appearance of The Yellow Book's first publication, Harland and Beardsley rejected the idea that the function of artwork was merely explanatory: "There is to be no connection whatever [between the text and illustrations].

[19] The copious amount of blank space utilized by The Yellow Book brought the magazine simplicity and elegance, stylistically overshadowing the "anaesthetic clutter of the typical Victorian page".

In the library of the protagonist of Willa Cather's short story, "Double Birthday" (1929): There was a complete file of the Yellow Book, for instance; who could extract sweet poison from those volumes now?John Betjeman's poem "The arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel" (1937) describes Wilde as saying: So you've brought me the latest Yellow Book: And Buchan has got in it now: Approval of what is approved of Is as false as a well-kept vow.