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Beardsley was aligned with the Yellow Book coterie of artists and writers, and produced many illustrations for that magazine. He was also aligned closely with Aestheticism, the British counterpart to Decadence and Symbolism. Beardsley's images are usually done in ink, and feature large dark areas contrasted with large blank ones, and areas of fine detail contrasted with areas with none at all.
Beardsley illustrated Oscar Wilde's SaloméSalom originally written in French in 1891 and translated into English, is a tragedy by the Irish-born playwright Oscar Wilde. The play tells in one act the Biblical story of Salome, daughter of the tetrarch Herod, who on her mother Herodias's demand requ and produced illustrations for a deluxe edition of Sir Thomas MalorySir Thomas Malory (c. 1405 1471) was the author or compiler of Le Morte d'Arthur''. The antiquary John Leland believed him to be Welsh, but most modern scholarship and this article assumes that he was Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel in Warwickshire.'s Le Morte d'ArthurLe Morte d'Arthur The Death of Arthur —the title is actually spelled as Le Morte Darthur in the first printing and also in many many modern editions—is Sir Thomas Malory's compilation of some French and English Arthurian romances. It was first published i. Beardsley also wrote Under the Hill, an unfinished erotic tale based loosely on the legend of Tannhäuserquattrocento for soft-core High Culture. Tannhauser in a figure in German legend and the title of an opera by Richard Wagner. Legend According to German legend, Tannhauser was a knight and poet, who found the Venusburg, or subterranean home of Venus..
Beardsley was a public character as well as a private eccentric. He said, "I have one aim--the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing." Wilde said he had "a face like a silver hatchet, and grass green hair."
Beardsley died of tuberculosisTuberculosis is also called TB consumption (TB seemed to consume people from within with its symptoms of bloody cough, fever, pallor, and long relentless wasting), wasting disease White Plague (TB sufferers appeared markedly pale), phthisis (Greek for con at the age of 25, working right up to the end.