Cover Photo: A strange, fantastical, beautiful illustration of a smiling figure holding a head severed from its body
Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley

Illustrating at a Social Distance: On Beardsley, Wilde, and ‘Salome’

Maybe Beardsley’s illustrations are divergent because he, like everybody else, couldn’t quite understand what Wilde was going for in the play.

Salome.The Importance of Being Earnest

Salome

The Yellow Book

Salome

Earnest

Curb Your EnthusiasmNew York TimesAtlantic

We should have read the one with the beautiful, disturbing pictures.

Salome

The Kingdom

J’ai baisé ta bouche Iokanaan, J’ai baisé ta bouche

Salome

Salome

Abby Walthausen's writing has appeared in The Public Domain Review, The Paris Review Daily, The Atlantic, Zocalo Public Square, Atlas Obscura, Common-place, Mutha, Extra Crispy, LARB, Electric Literature, and LitHub. Fictional work has been published by Gigantic, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, the Made in LA anthology, Santa Monica Review, Gulf Stream, and is forthcoming in Sycamore Review . She lives in Echo Park, Los Angeles where she guides a tour about twentieth-century printmaker Paul Landacre, and is at work on a novel, ST. CYR.