Aubrey Beardsley and Victorian sexual politics Book

In the first serious examination of Aubrey Beardsley's drawings, poetry, and unfinished erotic novel, this book looks beyond dismissals of Beardsley's work, and offers a stimulating reconsideration of his artistic perspective. By examining Beardsley's work within the social, artistic, and literary context of the 1890's, Zatlin demonstrates that behind the choice of his subject matter there was more than simply a desire for sexual exploration: there was also a serious protest against hypocrisy and against the sexist social conventions that fostered that hypocrisy. She explores the various types of women revealed in his art, and argues convincingly that gender relations were Beardsley's overwhelming concern, and that his main achievement emerged as an erotic art which challenged public sexual morality.