“One of the most notorious exponents of what was labelled decadence was not a writer, however, but an artist. Aubrey Beardsley’s distinctive, witty and often erotic illustrations are immediately recognisable, with their innovative shapes and lines and bold use of black and white space. Beardsley provided the cover illustrations for perhaps the most famous and notorious of decadent publications, The Yellow Book. This was a periodical, featuring essays, poems, fiction and illustrations. Launched in 1894, it ran until 1897. Yellow and green – colours associated with bruising and decay – were associated with decadent style, and The Yellow Book contributed to their startling new appeal. Large format, and beautifully produced, the volumes drew attention to their appeal as objects, like the works from Morris’s Kelmscott press. Again, decadence was part of a culture of commercialism as well as of creativity.”
Caroline Burdrett, Aesthetism and Decadence (2015)

“Within the history of literature no other disease is as complex and enigmatic as tuberculosis. The disease has known many names, including the Great White Plague, Phthisis, and, most famously, Consumption, before receiving the decidedly unromantic name tuberculosis in the mid-Nineteenth Century. For centuries, tuberculosis was a disease that was believed to be linked with special poetic and aesthetic qualities, and these beliefs were reflected not just in literature, but in medicine as well”.
Ashley M. Wilsey, Half in Love with Easeful Death: Tuberculosis in Literature (2012)