The most famous of all 1890s periodicals, The Yellow Book’s notoriety was largely undeserved, based on hysterical press reporting of alleged indecency in Beardsley’s artwork and an entirely imaginary association with Oscar Wilde, with which the outcry would reach its peak. On being arrested at the Cadogan Hotel, Wilde was seen to put a “Yellow Book” under his arm. Whether it was a volume of The Yellow Book, or a Pierre Louÿs volume is still a matter of debate, but the obvious conclusion was drawn, and in a very un-English display of passion a mob descended on Vigo Street and stoned the Bodley Head’s premises, and John Lane weakly surrendered to the prurience of the public and not only sacked Beardsley (assumed to be cut from the same cloth as Wilde) from his post as art-editor, but also restrained publication of volume V to remove Beardsley’s illustrations. As to its retreat from decadence, the present cataloguer feels obliged to quote John Betjeman in his The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel “ … and Buchan has got in it now. Approval of what is approved of is as false as a well kept vow.“
The question of the date of issue of sets of The Yellow Book is open to debate. It was being reprinted, often from the original plates and binding blocks and usually with no notice of edition, well into the 1920s. There would seem to be no absolute rule for determining priority, despite a wealth of book-trade lore to this effect, as paper stocks were mixed in the first issues and advertisements were included indiscriminately in reprints, but bearing in mind that the first printing of the first volume was sold out in five days one must assume, without any other evidence, that the majority of sets are reprints. Lasner (65) sums up the decades of confusion over the issue points of this book: “… the details are so perplexing that rational codification may well prove impossible”.
With a duplicate copy of volume 3. Some soiling and wear throughout, spine of volume 3 damaged at head and repaired. A sound reading set.
