Under the Hill

Overview:

• Title: Under the Hill
• Author: Aubrey Beardsley
• Year: 1959
• Publisher: The Olympia Press
• Pages: 123
• Binding: Hardcover
• Type: Novel
• Title Reference: Under the Hill
• Notes: This is a perverse, slightly erotic novel, written in a baroque and ornate manner as befit the Mauve Decade. It was begun in the 1890s and left uncompleted in manuscript form by Aubrey Beardsley, the celebrated Victorian illustrator and public character in the circle of Oscar Wilde who was associated with both the Yellow Book coterie and with Art Nouveau. A couple of expurgated chapters were published in the 1890s in a magazine called The Savoy and, as the years passed, various other people wrote further chapters to and/or revised the original version. In 1959, The Olympia Press, the Parisian publisher of English-language pornography for a number of years, produced this edition, an expensive, cloth-bound book with many illustrations by Bearsley and a long introduction (October, 1958) concerning the history of the work by John Glassco, a fairly well-known Canadian poet. Glassco also greatly expanded the original work and, apparently, brought it to the conclusion that Beardsley had originally planned for it, as shown by his notes. It is an erotic retelling, at least in part, of the story of Tannhauer and his encounter with Venus and her entourage "Under the Hill" in Venusberg.