Ownership signature of Aubrey Beardsley to ffep.
Aubrey Beardsley’s letters to his publisher, Leonard Smithers, refer to a regular flow of books being given as gifts to the artist by Smithers. At times these books were expressly requested by Beardsley, such as the copy of Liasons Dangereuses first mentioned in October 1896: ‘Do send me a copy of the L. D. if you love me!’ (Aubrey Beardsley to Leonard Smithers, 8th October 1896), while at others the impetus seems to have been Smithers’ own. The books sometimes served for Smithers as a creative alternative means of payment to Beardsley, to whom he almost habitually owed money, with the artist effectively placing orders: ‘May I have No 1180 and 1332 out of your last catalogue, if you care to let me have them out of any moneys you may pay me’ (Aubrey Beardsley to Leonard Smithers, 28th November 1896). Often the books given related to Beardsley’s illustrations; such was the case with Laclos, with Beardsley’s Count Valmont, taken from Liasons Dangereuses, appearing in 1896.
The present copy of the Kelmscott Press Atalanta likely fits into this pattern. In a letter sent on or around the 12th November 1896, Beardsley writes, presumably in response to an offer from Smithers: ‘No I don’t mind having an Atalanta (ordinary edition).’ Writing four days later, on the 16th of November, Beardsley acknowledges receipt: ‘… Thanks for the Atalanta! Presented to me originally by a fellow at the office’. Although Beardsley’s note is frustratingly vague about the edition of the copy sent to him, it nonetheless presents a plausible means to have acquired a book which was otherwise far too expensive for Beardsley to have purchased himself, printed by a man with whom Beardsley had chosen to go to war.
In late 1893 - 1894, the same year as the publication of the Kelmscott Atalanta, Beardsley performed a calculated act of blasphemy against William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites. Introduced originally be Edward Burne-Jones, Beardsley had first met Morris while pitching for work illustrating the frontispiece for the Kelmscott edition of Sidonia; Morris was not overly impressed, rejecting Beardsley’s proposal and perhaps seeking to soften the blow by telling the young artist that at least he ’had a feeling for draperies’.
Beardsley could hardly have found a better means of revenge than going on to illustrate an edition of Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, which was published by Dent beginning in 1893 in an attempt to compete with books printed by the Kelmscott Press. This was Morris’ sacred Arthurian urtext, he and Burne-Jones had ‘feasted’ on Southey’s reprint as students in Birmingham, and Georgiana Burne-Jones later wrote that the ‘book never can have been loved as it was by those two men.’ Morris was furious, and it was only the intervention of Burne-Jones which prevented him from taking legal action in an attempt to suppress Beardsley’s sensual and decadent parody of the Kelmscott style. Beardsley revelled in the opportunity to cause outrage, writing to G. F. Scottson Clark with mischievous glee that ’William Morris has sworn a terrible oath against me for daring to bring out a book in his manner. The truth is that, while his work is a mere imitation of the old stuff, mine is fresh and original.’
‘Beardsley’s clever travesty of the Kelmscott books was both a personal rebellion against his respectable elders and a fin-de-siècle response to Morris’ medievalism, which seemed to Beardsley’s generation a tiresome symptom of mid-Victorian values. When Leonard Smithers proposed establishing a magazine with the very ninetyish name of Peacock, Beardsley wrote to him in 1897, ’On the art side I suggest that it should attack untiringly and unflinchingly the Burne-Jones and Morrisian medieval business, and set up a wholesome seventeenth and eighteenth-century standard of what picture making should be.’ (William Peterson, The Kelmscott Press).
The prominence and large size of Beardsley’s ownership signature on the front free endpaper of the present copy is notable, and it certainly does not seem beneath the artist for this to have been thought of as one more blow in the struggle with Morris.
Very good, covers with several isolated spots of soiling, one tie lacking.