A Book of Fifty Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley

Delve deeper into the work of the intriguing and iconic artist Aubrey Beardsley with this beautiful reissue of his classic 1897 illustrated book, containing fifty of his best known works.Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898) lived a desperately short life and his career spanned just seven years. Nonetheless, his output as a draughtsman and illustrator was prolific. Beardsley's subversive illustrations became synonymous with decadence: he delighted in the erotic, shocking audiences with his bizarre sense of humour and fascination with the grotesque. His work was deemed too scandalous by many publishers of the period, but found a suitably unseemly home with the notorious Leonard Charles Smithers. This book, published by Smithers in 1897, and now reproduced in a near-facsimile edition, is as much a historic document as it is a beautiful introduction to Beardsley's art.