Aubrey Beardsley

Robert Ross was one of the first people that Aubrey Beardsley met when he arrived in London to make his name in 1892. Within six years the young artist was dead; but the work he produced in that short time revolutionised British art, and he was fixed forever in the public imagination as one of the leading spirits of the decadent era. Like many others, Ross was taken not only by the evident originality and genius of Beardsley’s work, but also by his character, remembering the ‘delightful and engaging smile both for friends and strangers’, his modesty, wit, erudition, and – contrary to popular opinion – his ‘briskness and virility’, or, as Beerbohm put it, his ‘stony common sense.’ Beardsley’s reputation, both artistic and personal, was caught up in the hurricane that overtook avant garde art after the trial of Oscar Wilde. Ross set out in his pioneering biography to redress the balance. He memorialised the worth of the man he knew, and established the seriousness of his art, its roots in the work of the Old Masters (of whom Beardsley had considerable knowledge). This combination of personal memoir and informed analysis by someone at the heart of the artistic world of the 1890’s makes this biography one of the most fascinating and evocative documents of the period. This republication is a close copy of the first stand-alone edition of 1909. It comes complete with all its original illustrations (and the advertisements for Beardsley’s publications) and the catalogue of Beardsley’s works by Aymer Vallance, which is still the cornerstone of Beardsley studies. It is introduced by Matthew Sturgis, Beardsley’s most distinguished recent biographer.

Robert Ross (1869-1918) was a leading figure in the circle around Oscar Wilde (whose literary executor he became) and Aubrey Beardsley, and later was involved with the war poets Sassoon and Owen. Aymer Vallance, artist and art historian, was a follower of William Morris. Matthew Sturgis's Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography, was published to great acclaim in 1999.