The Yellow Book. by (BEARDSLEY, Aubrey.) - 1894-97: An Illustrated Quarterly.

London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane; Copeland & Day, Boston,, 1894-97. An attractive set of the influential Aesthetic periodical 13 volumes, quarto. Original yellow cloth, boards lettered and decorated in black, edges untrimmed, largely unopened. Title page vignettes and 220 illustrations. Bookplate of James Mann to front pastedown of vol. V. Newspaper illustration to rear pastedown of vol. XIII, a couple more loosely inserted. Spines a little rolled and variously browned, short closed tear to foot of spine of vol. VII, faint soiling to cloth, a couple of bubbles to cover of vol. V, slight rubbing to extremities, light foxing to edges and occasionally to contents; a very good set. First editions, early issues, of all volumes except Volume III, which is a second edition, and Volume XI, which is bound without advertisements. Lasner notes that although it is nearly impossible to determine the exact issue of a given set of The Yellow Book, "no volume without the advertisements can be a true first edition" (Lasner, p. 10). The complete run of The Yellow Book, the leading literary periodical of the Aesthetic movement in Britain and a major influence on the art and literature of the day. Contributors include W. B. Yeats, Henry James, Max Beerbohm, Ella D'Arcy, Evelyn Sharp, Olive Custance, Baron Corvo, and Kenneth Grahame, with designs by Sir Frederick Leighton, Aubrey Beardsley, Walter Sickert, and Gertrude Hammond. Beardsley founded the periodical and edited the first few volumes; his illustrations for the first volume led to shocked reviews and "the magazine became a talking point because of his work; the first edition of 5,000 copies subsequently sold out in five days" (ODNB). Lasner, Mark Samuels, The Yellow Book: A Checklist and Index, The Eighteen Nineties Society (1998).