Aubrey Beardsley 2nd edition Available to Purchase

When Aubrey Beardsley left Brighton Grammar School he became a clerk, first in the office of a surveyor and then in the offices of a prominent life insurance company in London. This situation was so at odds with how the young man saw himself, according to the late Brian Reade, that he took to “aping” the manners and attitudes of the Aesthetes, particularly as promulgated in James McNeill Whistler’s The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890). By night he became a Wagnerite.

Mr Reade seems to have played an important part in reviving interest in Beardsley by organising a highly...