{"product_id":"burdett-osbert-the-beardsley-period-an-essay-in-perspective","title":"BURDETT, Osbert. The Beardsley Period. An Essay in Perspective.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eWith a Bookplate by Austin Osman Spare\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBURDETT, Osbert.\u003c\/strong\u003e The Beardsley Period. An Essay in Perspective. \u003ci\u003eLondon: John Lane, The Bodley Head Limited.\u003c\/i\u003e 1925.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s dark grey cloth, Art Nouveau foliate design to upper board in blind, spine lettered in gilt; pp. xi, [1 (blank)], 302, [6 (advertisements)], 4 ff. advertisements on yellow paper bound in at start and end; a few small chips to spine ends; sporadic light foxing; else a very good copy; large bookplate of Pickford Waller designed by Austin Osman Spare, dated 1923 (see below).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition of this study of the literary and artistic culture of the 1890s by Osbert Burdett, issued by the Bodley Head; this copy is from the library of notable Beardsley collector Pickford Waller, Austin Osman Spare’s primary patron, with a striking ex-libris designed by Spare himself.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBurdett was the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Idea of Coventry Patmore\u003c\/i\u003e (1921), \u003ci\u003eWilliam Blake\u003c\/i\u003e (1926), \u003ci\u003eW.E. Gladstone\u003c\/i\u003e (1928), \u003ci\u003eThe Brownings\u003c\/i\u003e (1928), and \u003ci\u003eThe Two Carlyles\u003c\/i\u003e (1930). In the same year that The Beardsley Period was published, Burdett’s sister, Lady Alsina Gwyer, established, with Geoffrey Gwyer, the publishing house of Faber \u0026amp; Gwyer (now Faber \u0026amp; Faber); T.S. Eliot joined Faber \u0026amp; Gwyer’s Board of Directors in the same year. The title is taken from Beerbohm’s quote ‘I belong to the Beardsley period’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe was ‘intimate with members of the “Uranian” circle, such as Forrest Reid and Edward Perry Warren, whose writings celebrate “boy-love” and the beauty of youth […] In \u003ci\u003eThe Beardsley Period\u003c\/i\u003e […] he occupies himself primarily with the economic valence of Decadent critique.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese young men, Burdett argues, represented a “protest against a commercial society” […] [The Decadents’] aloofness and archness, their devotion to beauty, and their love for all things occult served to strengthen their capacity to perceive lack and vulgarity in the industrial world’ (Bristow ed., \u003ci\u003eExtraordinary Aesthetes\u003c\/i\u003e (2023)).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdhered to the rear pastedown is a humorous poem on the present work and its publication:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e‘So \u003ci\u003ePunch\u003c\/i\u003e, who in his more pugnacious days\u003cbr\u003eRelentlessly assailed the aesthetic craze\u003cbr\u003eNo longer moved to posthumous invective\u003cbr\u003eWelcomes this measured “essay in perspective”,\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Beardsley Period\u003c\/i\u003e, where the author shows,\u003cbr\u003eConspicuous by their talents and their pose,\u003cbr\u003eContrasted with the drab Victorian back-cloth,\u003cbr\u003eThe men who spurned the creed of ash and sack-cloth […]’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eProvenance\u003c\/i\u003e: Pickford Waller (1849–1930) was Spare’s primary patron, supporting the artist until his death. The bookplate was one of multiple designs produced by Spare for Waller; this one, dated AD 1923, incorporates a herm of Pan, a central motif in Spare’s work, and was reproduced in The Golden Hind 1:4 (July 1923). Waller was an interior decorator and designer, and a designer of bookplates himself. He was an early collector of Beardsley and of Whistler, having met the latter when he visited his studio with the artist Matthew White Ridley. Nearly one hundred Beardsley items from Waller’s collection appeared in Frank Hollings’s Catalogue 170, \u003ci\u003eThe Choice \u0026amp; Remarkably Extensive Beardsley Collection Assembled by the Late Pickford Waller\u003c\/i\u003e, and the cover design (frequently misattributed to Beardsley) of Ernest Dowson’s 1889 \u003ci\u003eDecorations in Verse and Prose\u003c\/i\u003e is sometimes ascribed to him.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eFor the Spare bookplate, see North Lee 183.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125984\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64326451298681,"sku":"2125984","price":425.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125984.jpg?v=1787324889","url":"https:\/\/sotherans.co.uk\/products\/burdett-osbert-the-beardsley-period-an-essay-in-perspective","provider":"Sotherans","version":"1.0","type":"link"}