Yellow Book
Encyclopedia
John Lane (publisher)
-Biography:Originally from Devon, where he was born into a farming family, Lane moved to London already in his teens. While working as a clerk at the Railway Clearing House, he acquired knowledge as an autodidact....
, later by John Lane alone, and edited by the American Henry Harland
Henry Harland
Henry Harland was an American novelist and editor.Harland was born in New York City and attended City College but pretended to be Russian-born. His literary career falls into two distinct sections...
, was a quarterly literary periodical (priced at 5s.) that lent its name to the "Yellow" 1890s.
It was a leading journal of the British 1890s; to some degree associated with Aestheticism
Aestheticism
Aestheticism was a 19th century European art movement that emphasized aesthetic values more than socio-political themes for literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design...
and Decadence
Decadent movement
The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.-Overview:...
, the magazine contained a wide range of literary and artistic genres, poetry, short stories, essays book illustrations, portraits, and reproductions of paintings. Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His drawings, done in black ink and influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A....
was its first art editor, and he has been credited with the idea of the yellow cover, with its association with French fiction of the period. He obtained works by such artists as Charles Conder
Charles Conder
Charles Edward Conder was an English-born painter, lithographer and designer. He emigrated to Australia and was a key figure in the Heidelberg School, arguably the beginning of a distinctively Australian tradition in Western art.-Early life:Conder was born in Tottenham, Middlesex, the second son,...
, William Rothenstein
William Rothenstein
Sir William Rothenstein was an English painter, draughtsman and writer on art.-Life and work:William Rothenstein was born into a German-Jewish family in Bradford, West Yorkshire. His father, Moritz, emigrated from Germany in 1859 to work in Bradford's burgeoning textile industry...
, John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings...
, Walter Sickert
Walter Sickert
Walter Richard Sickert , born in Munich, Germany, was a painter who was a member of the Camden Town Group in London. He was an important influence on distinctively British styles of avant-garde art in the 20th century....
, and Philip Wilson Steer
Philip Wilson Steer
Philip Wilson Steer OM was a British painter of landscape and occasional portraits and figure studies. He was a leading figure in the Impressionist movement in Britain.-Life and work:...
. The literary content was no less distinguished; authors who contributed were:
- Max BeerbohmMax BeerbohmSir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist best known today for his 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson.-Early life:...
- Arnold BennettArnold Bennett- Early life :Bennett was born in a modest house in Hanley in the Potteries district of Staffordshire. Hanley is one of a conurbation of six towns which joined together at the beginning of the twentieth century as Stoke-on-Trent. Enoch Bennett, his father, qualified as a solicitor in 1876, and the...
- "Baron Corvo"
- Ernest DowsonErnest DowsonErnest Christopher Dowson , born in Lee, London, was an English poet, novelist and writer of short stories, associated with the Decadent movement.- Biography :...
- George GissingGeorge GissingGeorge Robert Gissing was an English novelist who published twenty-three novels between 1880 and 1903. From his early naturalistic works, he developed into one of the most accomplished realists of the late-Victorian era.-Early life:...
- Henry JamesHenry JamesHenry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
- Sir Edmund GosseEdmund GosseSir Edmund William Gosse CB was an English poet, author and critic; the son of Philip Henry Gosse and Emily Bowes.-Early life:...
- Richard Le GallienneRichard Le GallienneRichard Le Gallienne was an English author and poet. The American actress Eva Le Gallienne was his daughter, by his second marriage.-Life and career:...
- Charlotte MewCharlotte MewCharlotte Mary Mew was an English poet, whose work spans the cusp between Victorian poetry and Modernism.She was born in Bloomsbury, London the daughter of the architect Frederick Mew, who designed Hampstead town hall and Anna Kendall. She attended Lucy Harrison's School for Girls and lectures at...
- Arthur SymonsArthur SymonsArthur William Symons , was a British poet, critic and magazine editor.-Life:Born in Milford Haven, Wales, of Cornish parents, Symons was educated privately, spending much of his time in France and Italy...
- H. G. WellsH. G. WellsHerbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
- William Butler YeatsWilliam Butler YeatsWilliam Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...
Though Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
never published anything within its pages, it was linked to him because Beardsley had illustrated his Salomé
Salome (play)
Salome is a tragedy by Oscar Wilde.The original 1891 version of the play was in French. Three years later an English translation was published...
and because he was on friendly terms with many of the contributors. Moreover, in Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), a major corrupting influence on Dorian is "the yellow book" which Lord Henry sends over to amuse him after the suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
of his first love. This "yellow book" is understood by critics to be À rebours
À rebours
À rebours is a novel by the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans...
by Joris-Karl Huysmans
Joris-Karl Huysmans
Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans was a French novelist who published his works as Joris-Karl Huysmans . He is most famous for the novel À rebours...
, a representative work of Parisian decadence that heavily influenced British aesthetes like Beardsley. Such books in Paris were wrapped in yellow paper to alert the reader to their lascivious content. It is not clear, however, whether Dorian Gray is the direct source for the review's title. Soon after Wilde was arrested in April 1895 Beardsley was dismissed as the periodical's art editor, his post taken over by the publisher, John Lane
John Lane
John Lane may refer to:*John Lane *John W. Lane , Texas politician*John Lane , British publisher*John Carey Lane , Mayor of Honolulu...
, 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 the spring of 1897. A notable feature was the inclusion of work by women writers and illustrators, among them Ella D'Arcy
Ella D'Arcy
Ella D'Arcy was a short fiction writer in the late 19th and early 20th century.D'Arcy was born in London in 1857; the precise date is unknown. One of nine children, she was educated in London and the Channel Islands...
and Ethel Colburn Mayne (both also served as Harland's subeditors), George Egerton
George Egerton
Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright , better known by her pen name George Egerton, was a "New Woman" writer and feminist. Widely considered to be one of the most important of the "New Woman" writers of the nineteenth century fin de siecle, she was a friend of George Bernard Shaw, Ellen Terry and J. M...
, Rosamund Marriott Watson
Rosamund Marriott Watson
Rosamund Marriott Watson was a Victorian poet and critic who wrote under the pseudonym of Graham R. Tomson. Her poems, which presaged modernism, are informed by aestheticism and occasionally avant-garde sensibilities. Watson's personal life was fraught with scandal, she left first husband George...
, Ada Leverson
Ada Leverson
Ada Leverson was a British writer who is now known primarily for her work as a novelist.She began writing during the 1890s, as a contributor to Black and White, Punch, and The Yellow Book. She was a loyal friend to Oscar Wilde, who called her Sphinx...
, Netta and Nellie Syrett, and Ethel Reed
Ethel Reed
Ethel Reed was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, on March 13, 1874, daughter of Edgar Eugene Reed. Her family moved to Boston in 1890. She studied briefly at the Cowles Art School in Boston in 1893, and began to receive public notice for her illustrations in 1894. In the mid-1890s she was engaged...
.
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. American author Willa Cather
Willa Cather
Willa Seibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours , a novel set during World War I...
noted its presence in the personal library of one of her characters in the short story, Double Birthday
Double Birthday
Double Birthday is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in The Forum in February 1929.-Explanation of the title:Although the birthday party is for Uncle Albert, it is also Albert's birthday.-Plot summary:...
, noting that it had lost its "power to seduce and stimulate..."
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
Periodical publication
Periodical literature is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar examples are the newspaper, often published daily, or weekly; or the magazine, typically published weekly, monthly or as a quarterly...
fiction, and contained no advertisements
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
except publishers' lists.
Mentions in literature
In "An Ideal HusbandAn Ideal Husband
An Ideal Husband is an 1895 comedic stage play by Oscar Wilde which revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honour...
" by Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Cheveley (a rather immoral character) says:
The book sent by Lord Henry to Dorian Gray in Wilde's novel, which contributes considerably to his descent into corruption, is also described as being
The Yellow Book is also mentioned in W. Somerset Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...
's Of Human Bondage
Of Human Bondage
Of Human Bondage is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. It is generally agreed to be his masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although Maugham stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography, though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention." Maugham, who had...
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