BEARDSLEY, YEATS, SHAW – A RIVAL TO THE YELLOW BOOK
SYMONS, Arthur, editor.
The Savoy.
London, Leonard Smithers, 1896.
Nos. 1–8 (complete) in three vols, 4to, pp. [2], 170, [2], iv, 206; [3]–110, [3]–100, 92; [3]–100, [3]–96, [2], 101, [1]; with title-pages by Aubrey Beardsley and 88 plates in the text, including 30 by Beardsley, and, tipped in at the end of no. I, his ‘large Christmas card’ (often missing); apart from inevitable light foxing at either end of each volume, caused by the binding, and a little spotting here and there, a fine, bright set in the original royal blue cloth, the front covers blocked in gilt with Beardsley’s elaborate design for the title-page for no. I, spines slightly darkened, corners a little bumped.
First edition of this outstanding, though short-lived, avant-garde periodical, with contributions by Yeats (poems, and the three-part essay on William Blake and his Illustrations to the Divine Comedy), Shaw, Conrad, Dowson, Havelock Ellis (on Nietzsche and Hardy), Lionel Johnson, Beerbohm, Beardsley (both as author and illustrator), and others.
Conceived as a rival to The Yellow Book, The Savoy ‘stood boldly for the modern note without fear and without wavering of purpose … It represents the most ambitious and, if not the most comprehensive, the most satisfying achievement of fin de siècle journalism in this country’ (Holbrook Jackson, The Nineties). One of the Blake plates reproduced to accompany Yeats’s essay proved too much for W.H. Smith, who banished the journal from its bookstalls (see Nelson, Publisher to the Decadents: Leonard Smithers, chapter 3).
In no. VII, Symons announced that the journal was coming to an end. ‘We retire from the arena, not entirely dissatisfied if not a trifle disappointed, leaving to those who care for it our year’s work, which will be presented to you in three volumes, in a cover of Mr. Beardsley’s designing’. For the bound sets the front wrappers of the original eight numbers were reprinted on white paper (rather than pink or blue card) so that they could be bound in, as here. This is the first issue binding, with ‘Leonard Smithers 1896’ at the foot of the spine.
Lasner, Beardsley 103; Nelson, Smithers 1896.1B; see also Bentley, Blake Books 3051, Laurence (Shaw) C1111, Smith (Conrad) 4, and Wade (Yeats) 21, 24, 27, 46, 133 and pp. 318–21.
