Aubrey Beardsley: Poetry: Lines on Oscar Wilde's Salome

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Books

In Black & White

Order

Title Page
Under the Hill

Prose
The Art of the Hoarding
Letters to his Critics
   Pall Mall Budget
   Daily Chronicle
   St. Paul’s
Table Talk
Lines upon Pictures
   St Rose of Lima
   Salome

Poetry
The Three Musicians
The Ballad of a Barber
Ave Atque Vale
The Celestial Lover
The Ivory Piece
Prospectus for Volpone

Appendix : Juvenilia
The Valiant
A Ride in an Omnibus
The Confession Album
The Courts of Love
Dante in Exile
Written in Uncertainty
The Morte Darthur

Enoch Soames

Enter Herodias

Enter Herodias

Lines on Pictures

Verse inscribed on a proof of the unexpurgated version of the Salome illustration “Enter Herodias”

Because one figure was undressed
This little drawing was suppressed.
It was unkind—
But never mind—
Perhaps it was all for the best.

¶ 1894. Beardsley’s illustrations to Oscar Wilde’s Salome were published in 1894. These lines, inscribed on a proof copy of the unexpurgated version of one of the most contentious of the pictures he executed, were sent by Beardsley to his friend Alfred Lambart.