Salomé A Tragedy in One Act [with] Salomé Drame en un Acte by [LIMITED EDITIONS CLUB]; WILDE, Oscar; BEARDSLEY, Aubrey (illustrator); DERAIN, André (illustrator)

London / Paris: Limited Editions Club, 1938. In English and French With the Beardsley and the Derain Illustrations WILDE, Oscar. BEARDSLEY, Aubrey. DERAIN, André. Salomé A Tragedy in One Act Translated from the French of Oscar Wilde by Lord Alfred Douglas and illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley. With a new introduction by Holbrook Jackson. [with] Salomé Drame en un Acte. London / Paris: Limited Editions Club, 1938. Wilde: Limited to 1500 numbered copies, this being copy no. 834. Derain: Limited to 1500 numbered copies signed by Derain, this being copy no. 834. Two quarto volumes (10 7/8 x 7 3/4 in.). Beardsley: [10], 11-105, [3] pp; Sixteen black and white illustrations of which twelve are full-page. Derain: [8], 9-71, [1], [1, limitation], 1, blank] pp. Ten inserted color plates on black paper. Publisher's full terra cotta cloth with gilt decoration (Beardsley), and black printed wrappers (Derain). The Derain volume in original mylar as issued. A fine set. Housed in the publisher's red cardboard slipcase (a little worn at extremities). When Salomé was first published in February 1893, the Pall Mall Budget magazine asked Beardsley for a drawing in response. They rejected the macabre, fantastic image he based around the play's last scene, in which Salomé embraces the severed head of John the Baptist. J'ai Baisé Ta Bouche, Iokanaan. Here, it is redrawn as 'the Climax', without the text. In April, however an art publication, The Studio, ran it as part of its first edition. Wilde saw the drawing pre-publication and liked it; in March, he inscribed a copy of the earlier printing of the book "March '93. For Aubrey. For the only artist who, besides myself, knows what the Dance of the Seven Veils is, and can see that invisible dance." Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (21 August 1872 - 16 March 1898) was an English illustrator and author. At the age of nineteen he achieved notable and lasting acclaim for his illustrations in the Dent edition of Malory's Le Morte Darthur in 1892. He was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A. McNeill Whistler. In 1894, Beardsley became the art editor of The Yellow Book under the general editorship of Oscar Wilde but with his advancing tuberculosis and Wilde's arrest - that put an end to that satirical periodical. His drawings in black ink, influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. Although in increasingly poor health, Beardsley continued to produce illustrations, including those in The Savoy, The Rape of the Lock, and The Lysistrata. Aubrey Beardsley died from tuberculosis at the very young age of 25 on the 16th March, 1898. André Derain (1880-1954) was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.