audiobook Salome (Dover Fine Art; History of Art) by Aubrey Beardsley; Oscar Wilde in Arts-Photography

Description

Few works in English literature have so peculiar a history as Oscar Wildes play Salome. Written originally in French in 1892 and ridiculed on its publication; translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas ("Bosie" himself) and again heaped with scorn; it has survived for 75 years; served as the text (in abridged form) for Richard Strauss world-famous opera; and emerged as an acknowledged masterwork of the Aesthetic movement of fin de siegrave;cle England.The illustrations that Aubrey Beardsley prepared for the first English edition have no less strange a story. Beardsley liked neither the play nor its author. Yet; it inspired some of his finest work. It is an open question as to how suited the drawings actually are to the text that Wilde wrote. Yet; the two; the play and the Beardsley illustrations; have nevertheless become so identified with each other as to be inseparable.This edition reprints the first edition (1894) text; with "A Note on Salome" by Robert Ross. The Beardsley drawings it superbly reproduces (mostly from a rare early portfolio) include not only the 10 full-page illustrations; the front and back cover designs; the title and List of Illustrations page decorations; and the cul de lampe from the original edition; but also three drawings that were not used; an alternate cover sketch; and the drawing entitled "Jai baiseacute; ta bouche; Iokanaan;" which Beardsley did earlier for The Studio. Furthermore; all of the illustrations are reproduced in their original state; not as expurgated in the first and most subsequent editions.