Salome. A Tragedy in One Act. Translated from the French of Oscar Wilde with Sixteen Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley. With an introductory Note by Robert Ross. London: John Lane, 1906. First Edition Thus. Publisher’s green cloth with gilt decoration by Beardsley to upper cover. Light wear to head of spine, neat gift inscription to endpaper. A nice bright copy.

Pictorial title and fifteen plates by Aubrey Beardsley with a double-page facsimile opera bill.

First published with Beardsley’s illustrations in 1894, the first uncensored edition did not appear in full until 1906. This edition contains all of Beardsley’s intended illustrations which were previously and controversially cancelled or ‘bowdlerised’: The uncensored title page, the cover design prepared for the 1894 edition which was suppressed, the illustration of John and Salome which was previously cancelled, the uncensored version of Enter Herodias, both versions of The Toilet of Salome, and a full sized illustration of the Cul de Lampe. Although dated 1907 the book was in fact published in September 1906.

Robert Ross (writer, art critic, and Wilde’s literary executor), 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.’

[Mason 355]