BRIAN READE

This book includes virtually all of Beardsley's mature work, culled from a wide variety of sources. It enables us to distinguish between the genuine Beardsley and the hundreds of spurious pastiches attributed to him. Perhaps the key to his great popularity is his consummate ability with line and shape and his use of space. His defiant personality projected itself in black and white, not in three-dimensional realism. If some of his contemporaries saw it differently the fact remains he is now regarded as an artist draughtsman of brilliant invention. This is Aubrey Beardsley's centenary year and is marked by a major exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum.