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A STUDY IN YELLOW by Katherine Lyon Mix

A STUDY IN YELLOW

By

Pub Date: March 16th, 1960
Publisher: University of Kansas

An assiduous review of the thirteen issues (1894-1897) of The Yellow Book is filled in with details of the lives of those who produced it -- John Lane of Bodley Head, the publisher, the American Henry Harland and the willowy Aubrey Beardsley, the editors -- of those who contributed -- and many others who did not. The Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite areas that preceded the '90's are considered; the uncertainties of the actual origin of the quarterly are covered; and the whole fabric of gossip, feuds, friendships, of the social life and the conflicts, extends the account of the controversial periodical. The critics' attacks, its reception at home and in America, the impact of some of the articles and stories and of Beardsley's art work in particular, (he was eventually dismissed), and the contents of the individual issues -- combine to give the feeling of a ""troublesome"" decade -- its ideas, personalities, its atmosphere of experimentalism, its literary trends. The index shows the scope from Francis Adams and Aestheticism to Israel Zangwill and Emile Zola, with every conceivable major and minor author and artist included in between. A find for literary historians, critics and culturally informed readers.