Aubrey and the Dying Lady: A Beardsley Riddle - Hardcover

Easton, Malcolm

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0436140705 ISBN 13: 9780436140709

Publisher: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd, 1972

Synopsis

For all that Aubrey Beardsley's work is increasingly familiar and the outline of his brief incandescent life well known, certain mysteries have so far resisted interpretation. Beardsley's contacts were ambiguous, his motives obscure, his obsessions apparently selected and nurtured at random; even his dying request is open to many readings - and did Beardsley in fact write it himself ?

Dr Easton eschews the traditional biographical approach and opens up new perspectives on Beardsley's inimitable graphic work by scrutinising the artist in his social context, and analysing his subtle relationships with colleagues, with friends, with publishers, with craftsmen. Above all Dr Easton studies Beardsley's intricate relationship with his devoted sister Mabel, the dynamic and beautiful actress who was later to become the 'Dying Lady' of W. B. Yeats' profoundly moving sequence of poems. Are the suggestions of incest justified ? What light can the biographer shed on the persistent symbolism that permeates - almost dominates -Beardsley's work?

Dr Easton's research combines the keenest tools of biographical enquiry with an imaginative and aesthetic grasp that enables him to define the artist's ambivalent and multi-faceted personality. This book, illustrated with examples of Beardsley's own work and with many previously unpublished photographs of the artist and his circle, and of the scenery he knew, reveals totally new lines of exploration into the nature of the figure who epitomised the Age of Decadence

Edition details

• Publisher: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd
• Publication date: 1972
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0436140705
• ISBN 13: 9780436140709
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288