A brief career in books and magazines
Beardsley worked as a clerk in London before a commission to illustrate Malory’s Le Morte Darthur enabled him to leave office work. He had been drawing around his reading, and a visit to Edward Burne-Jones brought encouragement and introductions. Recurrent tuberculosis interrupted his work throughout his short career.
In 1894 he became art editor of The Yellow Book. He lost the position during the scandal following Wilde’s arrest the next year, then worked with Arthur Symons on The Savoy. The new magazine published his fiction and verse alongside his drawings. He moved to the French Riviera as his health deteriorated and died in 1898, aged twenty-five.
The writer behind the drawings
Under the Hill retells the Tannhäuser legend through lavish descriptions of dress, rooms and ceremony. The unfinished story appeared with other writings in a Bodley Head collection in 1904. John Lane’s prefatory recollections introduce the volume, which also includes The Ballad of a Barber, letters and a translation from Catullus. His illustrations for Pope’s The Rape of the Lock offer a different encounter with language. Around the poem’s mock-heroic adventures, Beardsley fills the page with patterned clothes, furniture and ornaments that reward lingering over small details.
