ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Aubrey Beardsley was the quintessential figure of the heady years of the 1890s’ English decadence. Beardsley was on the periphery of the central activities of the English avantgarde movement in the 1890s. The uncertainty as to the exact nature of Beardsley’s status in the literary and artistic world is also signalled by the coinciding interest in him by both satirical novelists and compilers of reference works. As well as introducing Beardsley to other artists, Joseph Pennell’s article also raised issues that later became recurrent themes in critical reviews of his work. On 16 March 1898, after fifteen months of relative seclusion, Beardsley passed away, exhausted by tuberculosis. Beardsley’s rapid and skilful assimilation of various styles meant that English critics from 1893 up to the First World War often did not know how to approach his drawings.
