Salome. A Tragedy in One Act. Translated From the French of Oscar Wilde With Sixteen Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley. Introduction by Robert Ross. London: Bodley Head, 1912. Pp xxiii, 82, [6] uncut. Small 8vo. Publisher’s green cloth boards with design ‘The Seven Trees,’ by Charles Ricketts stamped in gilt to upper cover, title lettered in gilt to spine. Light creasing to upper board, contents in very good condition.

With 16 uncensored plates by Beardsley and a twenty-two page ‘Note on Salome’ by Wilde’s friend & literary executor, Robert Ross. Ross, who says of Beardsley’s illustrations: ‘It is interesting that he should have found inspiration for his finest work in a play he never admired and by a writer he cordially disliked.’

The first edition to feature Beardsley’s drawings was published in 1895. However several of the illustrations were censored. The first edition publishing the full suite of sixteen Beardsley illustrations & to featuring the cover design by Rickett’s, was issued in 1907.