Item 10: The Yellow Book (1894)

Unlike his friend Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898), who used his art editorship of The Yellow Book to shock audiences, Beerbohm began his literary career by puzzling and confounding them. Beardsley’s cover for the debut of this avant-garde magazine was proudly offensive, with a masked woman who was no lady and her sinister-looking companion. Beerbohm’s contribution was instead sneakily and comically evasive and filled with ironies. His “A Defence of Cosmetics” appeared to champion artificial over natural beauty for all genders, in support of the Decadent movement’s values, which rejected so-called healthy moral standards and defied conventional expectations in art and life alike. But it was also a parody that exaggerated Decadent style in order to laugh at it. Many journalists missed this subtlety. Taking the essay at (painted) face value, they denounced or ridiculed Beerbohm, turning him into a notorious Decadent celebrity at age 21. In the next issue of The Yellow Book, Beerbohm addressed these critics directly in a letter and scolded them for not recognizing that his had been “a very delicate bit of satire.”