Aubrey Beardsley

Colvin combines his particular interest in the history of clandestine publishing with his experience as an art historian to explore the work of the most notorious artist of the fin de siecle. Before he died at age 25, British illustrator and writer Beardsley created erotic drawings for Wilde's Salome, Pope's Rape of the Lock, The Lysistrata of Aristophanes, and Jonson's Valpone and to write his own highly erotic novel originally published as The Story of Venus and Tannhauser.