Books

FIRST EDITION. Nos. 1 to 8 (all published). 3 vols. 4to. (26 x 19 cm). Bound from the parts in the publisher's original blue cloth, elaborately gilt decorated with a design by Beardsley, with the Christmas card. Profusely illustrated throughout by Beardsley, Whistler, Beerbohm, Shannon, Pennell, and others; literary contributions by Yeats, Shaw, Gosse, Dowson, Moore, Verlaine, and others. Some trvial wear to extremities of spines, generally a remarkably well-preserved set in excellent condition. The Savoy was a magazine of literature, art, and criticism published in eight numbers from January to December 1896 in London. It was founded as a competitor to The Yellow Book and to provide work for members of the Decadent movement as it began to decline with the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde. The magazine was started by Leonard Smithers (the controversial friend of Wilde and known pornographer), writer Arthur Symons (The Symbolist Movement In Literature), and artist Aubrey Beardsley. It featured work by authors such as W. B. Yeats, Max Beerbohm, Joseph Conrad, Aubrey Beardsley and William Thomas Horton, and has been described as "a manifesto in revolt against Victorian materialism". The name was inspired by the Savoy Hotel, a glamorous hotel in London which opened in 1889 and became infamous for being the location for Oscar Wilde's trysts.