The Bodley Head was an independent British publishing house, which took on the defining periodical of 1890s British literature, The Yellow Book. It was associated with decadence and aestheticism. The name is a testament to “the yellow book” in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), which is believed to be Joris-Karl Huysmans's (1848-1907) novel À rebours. It was edited by Henry Harland and Aubrey Beardsley––who illustrated the cover of Oscar Wilde’s (1854-1900) Salome. Wilde did not publish in the periodical; however, after his trial, the periodical was sustained by poetry written by women, who “obliquely expressed sympathy with Wilde” (Hughes). On his way to his first trial, Wilde carried a volume of The Yellow Book, which maintained its association with aestheticism, decadence, and even homosexuality. The periodical had several gay, lesbian, and bisexual contributors among its vast array of literary and artistic genres.

Archive: http://www.1890s.ca/Volumes.aspx?p=The%20Yellow%20Book

Hughes, Linda K. "Women Poets and Contested Spaces in The Yellow Book." SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, vol. 44 no. 4, 2004, p. 849-872. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/sel.2004.0038.

Ledger, Sally. "Wilde Women and The Yellow Book: The Sexual Politics of Aestheticism and Decadence." English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, vol. 50 no. 1, 2007, p. 5-26. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/elt.2007.0007.