V&A
The Yellow Book was a short-lived but influential quarterly illustrated magazine published in London from 1894 to 1897.[1] It contained a wide range of literary and artistic genres, including poetry, short stories, essays, book illustrations, portraits, and reproductions of paintings.[2]
Aubrey Beardsley was the publication’s first art editor, which lent it a certain degree of notoriety, as he had previously illustrated Oscar Wilde’s Salomé, but nothing of Wilde’s work was ever published in the magazine.[2]
The magazine supposedly took its name from the illicit French novels of the period, which were wrapped in yellow paper to warn potential readers of their lascivious content,[1] an idea credited to Beardsley.[2] Its cover price of five shillings is equivalent to £36 as at 2023,[a]Calculated using the retail price index.[3] but it differed from other periodicals of the time in containing no advertising, and being issued clothbound.[1]
The Yellow Book‘s mise-en-pageTerm used to describe the physical layout of a page or manuscript, features such as indentation, columns, margins, font and so on. differed substantially from contemporary Victorian periodicals, with its “asymmetrically placed titles, lavish margins, abundance of white space, and relatively square page”.[4]