BURDETT, Osbert. The Beardsley Period. An Essay in Perspective.
London: John Lane, The Bodley Head Limited, 1925
£ 600
8vo (85 x 120mm); pp. [4], xi, 302, [6 (advertisements)], [4]; advertisements printed on yellow paper bound in at start and end. large bookplate of Pickford Waller designed by Austin Osman Spare, dated 1923. Publisher’s grey cloth, double blind ruled with organic Art Nouveau motif to upper board, flat spine with title, author and publisher lettered in gilt. Light wear to edges, in excellent condition.
First edition of this study of the literary and artistic culture of the 1890s by Osbert Burdett, a copy owned by one of Spare’s patrons: the wealthy property developer Pickford Waller, whose ex-libris is in this copy.
Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956) was a great artist, influenced by symbolism and art nouveau, his art was known for its clear use of line and its depiction of monstrous and sexual imagery. He was a student of the occultist Aleister Crowley and a friend and mentor to the Thelemite author and ceremonial magician Kenneth Grant.
Osbert Burdett (1885-1936) was a British literary critic, essayist, and biographer best known for his studies of late‑Victorian and early‑modern literary figures and for his cultural writings. Burdett was the author of The Idea of Coventry Patmore (1921), William Blake (1926), W.E. Gladstone (1928), The Brownings (1928), and The Two Carlyles (1930). In the same year that The Beardsley Period was published, Burdett’s sister, Lady Alsina Gwyer, alongside Geoffrey Gwyer, established the publishing house Faber & Gwyer (now Faber & Faber); T.S. Eliot joined Faber & Gwyer’s Board of Directors in the same year. The title is taken from Beerbohm’s quote ‘I belong to the Beardsley period’.
Adhered to the rear pastedown is a humorous poem on the present work and its publication:
‘So Punch, who in his more pugnacious days
Relentlessly assailed the aesthetic craze
No longer moved to posthumous invective
Welcomes this measured ‘’essay in perspective’’,
The Beardsley Period, where the author shows,
Conspicuous by their talents and their pose,
Contrasted with the drab Victorian back-cloth,
The men who spurned the creed of ash and sack-cloth,
Strove without ceasing to acclimatize
‘’The Flowers of Evil’’ under English skies,
And, though their favourite hue was that of sage,
Left no green memories to the present age.’
Provenance
Pickford Waller (1849-1930) was Spare’s primary patron, supporting the artist until his death. The bookplate, dated AD 1923, was one of multiple designs produced by Spare for Waller. Incorporates a herm of Pan, a central motif in Spare’s work, and was reproduced in The Golden Hind 1:4 (July 1923). Nearly one hundred Beardsley items from Waller’s collection appeared in Frank Holling’s Catalogue 170, The Choice & Remarkably Extensive Beardsley Collection Assembled by the Late Pickford Waller.