Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898)
Autograph letter signed (‘Aubrey Beardsley’) to [E.J.] Marshall, 114 Cambridge Street, [London], n.d.
6 pages, 176 x 112mm, on two bifolia. Provenance: Phillips, 9 April 1981, lot 119.

‘I shall at last be able to do myself complete justice’: on a forthcoming book that will showcase his drawings, work to be supplied for his school magazine, and the beauty of Sussex. ‘Mother tells me that you were thinking of writing to me suggesting the subject for a picture for “Past & Present”. Would it not be better just now to have a selection of my drawings that have appeared in different books. Many of them illustrate very limited editions de Luxe & therefore would be quite unknown to the average reader. I would easily get permission from any of my publishers to have them reproduced. However, I shall be very anxious to do a new original drawing for the magazine after Christmas’; informing his correspondent of his recent illness, which has set him back in his busiest time; he has just signed a contract for a new book, ‘entirely my own – no letterpress […] I am rather excited about it’; and reminiscing on his schooldays, ‘my mind continually wanders back to Sussex’.

E.J. Marshall was the headmaster of Brighton grammar school, Beardsley’s alma mater. Beardsley contributed illustrations to Past and Present, the school magazine, while still a pupil, and continued to do so after he left.