Introductory Note and Acknowledgements

The chapters in this book are based on various contributions previously published in French, mainly in edited volumes, a special issue, and a book chapter. My oldest piece on Aubrey Beardsley dates from the early 1990s, the latest from 2019. Yet this book is no mere collection of previously published work. All chapters correspond to revamped, rewritten, enlarged, and combined versions, elaborated in view of the various arguments put forward here.

In my literary explorations across cultures and printed material, Beardsley has always been one of my favourite artists. By no means an easily domesticated or uncomplicated travelling companion, he has trained my eye and taught me much about language and wit. Furthermore, revisions in this book have benefitted from my own previous work on books and prints as cultural objects and several collective ventures on the periodical press.

I warmly thank Paul Edwards, who many years ago patiently and thoroughly scanned the grotesque vignettes and other material from period publications in private collections; Corin Thorsby for her thorough editing of an earlier state of the manuscript, her critical eye and helpful questions; Margaret D. Stetz for a generous review; Alessandra Tosi for her confidence and interest in this book; Adèle Kreager for painstaking and patient copyediting; Cameron Craig for his clever layouts and work on images; Jeevanjot Kaur Nagpal for her skilful fortitude with images and an inventive conception of the cover; Mark Samuels Lasner and assistant Michael McShane for dedicated support with scans from Mark Samuels Lasner’s first-rate collection of Beardsleyana; Gretha Arwas for authorising me to publish Alastair’s colourful drawing; Lorraine Jansen Kooistra for images and elucidations from the Yellow Nineties 2.0; Éric Walbecq, Hélène Védrine and Clément Dessy for confirming details; and lastly the personnel of several institutions who responded to requests and questions with promptitude and grace.

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from other languages into English are my own. In the absence of titles for Sidney H. Sime’s and Marcus Behmer’s grotesques, I have provided my own in captions as Linda Gertner Zatlin has done for Beardsley’s in her catalogue raisonné.