The Bodley Head, 9 Vigo Street, London

The Bodley Head, located at 9 Vigo Street, was one of the most avant-garde publishers of the 1890s. Particularly after John Lane took over sole proprietorship of the firm in fall 1894, the publishing house was noted for its "list of belles lettres," which included illustrated and well-designed books of poetry and fiction by decadent and New Woman authors and artists. Among other notable works, The Bodley Head published The Yellow Book (1894-1897), Oscar Wilde's Salome: A Tragedy in One Act (1894), Laurence Housman's self-illustrated collection of fairy tales, A House of Joy (1895), and Clemence Housman's gothic novella, The Were-Wolf (1896). The drawing of The Bodley Head shop front by E.H New was used on the publisher's catalogue. 

Parent Map

Victorian Illustrated Books Map

Coordinates

Latitude: 51.510223100000
Longitude: -0.139186200000

Timeline of Events Associated with The Bodley Head, 9 Vigo Street, London

Date Event Manage
1894 to 1897

The Yellow Book

The Yellow Book, Volume IX

(Elkin Matthews & John Lane, 1896)

 

Published between 1894 and 1897, ‘The Yellow Book’ promoted the ‘Aesthetic’ and ‘Decadent’ styles.  The April 1896 volume [displayed] featured an impressive array of women of the Birmingham School, including Celia Levetus, Georgie Gaskin, H. Isabel Adams, and Mary Newill.

 

 

 

 
Feb 1894

Illustrated English edition of Salome Published

Oscar Wilde first published Salomé in French in 1893. The story of the play is loosely based on the biblical passage that tells of John the Baptist's beheading after the daughter of Herodias dances for Herod. In Wilde's version, it is Salome, not her mother, who demands John's head on a silver platter. The first English edition, Salome: A Tragedy in One Act,was published in 1894 by The Bodley Head and illustrated with 10 full-page pictures by Aubrey Beardsley. Both the text and its images were controversial. The publisher, John Lane, suppressed some of Beardsley's illustrations; these were later published in the 1907 edition. Oscar Wilde did not like Beardsley's illustrations. "My Herod is like the Herod of Gustave Moreau--wrapped in his jewels and sorrows. My Salomé is a mystic, the sister of Salammbô, a Sainte Thérèse who worships the moon; dear Aubrey's designs are like the naughty scribbles a precocious schoolboy makes on the margins of his copybooks" (Jean-Paul Raymond and Charles Ricketts, Oscar Wilde: Recollections).

 Image of a book's decorated orange wrappers Decorated Wrapper by Aubrey Beardsley for Salome