Little Oscar and the Art of the Illustrated Letter
Have you noticed how most of Victorian life appears to correspond? Everyone seems to know everyone else, and one thing usually leads to another. Well it’s the same with Victorian studies,
On my agenda last week were two pieces of business:
First was research into a parody of Wilde and Walt Whitman written by Helen Gray Cone entitled “Narcissus in Camden” which casts the two poets as ancient Greek poseurs, and needless to say, Wilde is Narcissus. It appeared in the November 1882 issue of the Century magazine. Incidentally, the reason for my Wilde/Whitman pursuit relates to the need to counter some juvenile online speculation about their famous meetings in Camden, New Jersey.
Second was a periodic pilgrimage to the Mark Samuels Lasner collection at the University of Delaware, one of the country’s foremost collections of books, manuscripts, letters, and artworks by British cultural figures who flourished between 1850 and 1900, One such figure was Edward Carpenter, and the ostensible purpose of my visit was to accompany an Edward-expert friend to see Carpenter’s inscribed books and Rothenstein’s chalk sketch. of the man.
These two diversions came together, in a roundabout way in a pleasing piece of Victorian correspondence.
While Beardsley’s brief career was cut short aged 25 by his death from tuberculosis, he made an impact as a brilliant and daring innovator who often caused controversy by using satirical imagery to push gender and sexual boundaries.
On view at the Grolier Club in New York City from September 8 through November 12, 2022 is ‘Aubrey Beardsley, 150 Years Young’—an exhibition drawn from materials in the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection in the UD Library, Museums and Press.
The exhibition highlights the rebellious quality of his art and writing, celebrating the eternally young Beardsley, and exploring the meteoric rise of the 19th-century British artist, who became a monumental figure in book and magazine illustration, graphic arts and poster design, and the history of gender and sexuality.
The exhibition is assembled by a long-time Grolier Club member, Mark Samuels Lasner, and reflects both his own interests and expertise and those of his partner, Margaret D. Stetz, the Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women’s Studies and Professor of Humanities at the University of Delaware.
Together they have curated this exhibition, and you can preview Margaret’s excellently assembled labels for project in an online version here: Grolier Club Online.
For those visiting the Exhibition Gallery in person the hours are Monday to Saturday, 10 AM—5 PM, and there will also be a printed catalogue coming later this Fall.
At the risk of being oxymoronic, Margaret Stetz is a most energetic decadent. Earlier this year we enjoyed her masked but still ‘in-person conversation’ on The Decadent Aubrey Beardsley at the Rosenbach in Philadelphia; and she also gave a talk in London at the recent conference AB 150: The Artist Resurgent organized by the Decadence Research Centre at Goldsmiths in association with the Aubrey Beardsley Society and Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies. There have probably been myriad other events in between.
Also speaking at the conference was another Oscar Wilde Society stalwart: Anne Anderson of Exeter University, who, in turn, will be giving her own impressions of the Beardsley style in ‘Aubrey Beardsley: Enfant Terrible of the 1890s’ as part of three-part series of online lectures in September and October entitled: The Wilde Years: 1870-1900.
And to complete a female triumvirate of expertise, no review of contributors to the Beardsley oeuvre would be complete without reference to the canonical and comprehensive Aubrey Beardsley: A Catalogue Raisonné, a two volume set by Linda Gertner Zatlin, representing the first complete presentation of the provocative, modernist, graphic works of Beardsley. It is an essential work for both serious scholars and occasional researchers.
Aubrey Beardsley. A catalogue raisonné. Zatlin, Linda Gertner
You may recall a post I made a few years ago about a CBS-TV arts show called ‘Camera Three’ which aired at 11:00 AM EST on Sunday, March 12, 1967.
It took the form of an interview with Brian Reade, then curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and contained reference to the V&A’s Aubrey Beardsley exhibition which had transferred to New York’s (then-named) Gallery of Modern Art.
During that segment there occurred a rare TV appearance by Oscar Wilde’s son, Vyvyan Holland. Not long after my article appeared the clip disappeared from the Internet because the owner had closed their YouTube channel. However, I have found it again.
Take a look below: filmed just seven months before Vyvyan Holland died in October of that year, it provides a chance to see his unassuming manner as he reveals personal experiences such as shooting moose and witnessing the bedridden (and bearded) Beardsley.
The part containing Vyvyan Holland begins around minute number 20.
[Creative Arts Television / Bridgeman Images: FOOTAGE Numero CTA620164]
Materials from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection. Photo: University of Delaware Library.
Exhibition and Symposium
Mark Samuels Lasner has long been recognized as an authority on the literature and art of the late Victorian era. He is also a collector, bibliographer, typographer, and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Delaware Library.
To those offices he can now add the honorific of benefactor.
For recently Mark donated his private library, the extensive Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, to the University of Delaware. It has been housed since 2004 in the Morris Library, and now becomes largest and most important gift of its kind in the university’s history.
Memorabilia of Oscar Wilde’s Friends From World War I
Oscar Wilde, essential figure of the fin de siècle (end of the century) thought he was, joked with Robert Ross that he would not outlive it. Oscar, who was usually right about everything, wasn’t far wrong on this score: he died in November 1900.
He left behind friends who were to belong to a new movement, an artistic circle that I might call the début du siècle, who inherited a world of change that was soon to become a world at war.
The Oscar Wilde Blog 