Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Lysistrata: Illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley

Lysistrata: Illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley

Aristophanes

Paperback

Fiction AnthologiesPlays

ISBN10: 194166704X
ISBN13: 9781941667040
Publisher: Createspace
Published: Dec 14 2014
Pages: 66
Weight: 0.29
Height: 0.14 Width: 7.01 Depth: 10.00
Language: English
A Classic Available Again

Aristophanes was the greatest writer of ancient Athenian old comedy, known for its satires of contemporary life and for its broad, often obscene humor.

Lysistrata was first produced in 411 BC, when the Peloponnesian War had been devastating Greece for 20 years. Most people know the plot: Lysistrata assembles women from all of Greece, and they agree that they will not have sex until the men make peace.

Aubrey Beardsley was the greatest and the most controversial Art Nouveau illustrator in England, famous for his illustrations of Mallory's Morte d'Arthur, Oscar Wilde's Salome, Pope's The Rape of the Lock, and for several magazines.

Because he was associated with Oscar Wilde, Beardsley lost his job as art editor of a magazine named The Yellow Book in 1895, soon after Wilde was arrested for homosexuality.

He was approached by Leonard Smithers, a publisher of erotic books, who asked him to illustrate Lysistrata. His illustrations are very much in the spirit of Aristophanes, as funny as they are obscene.

Beardsley converted to Catholicism in 1897, and soon after, he asked Smithers to destroy all copies of Lysistrata with its obscene drawings, but Smithers refused.

Beardsley died of tuberculosis in 1898, at the age of 26.

Smithers initially published Lysistrata in a limited edition of one hundred copies. It was reprinted in the 1960s and 1970s, but copies have long been scarce and expensive.

Though some may find it offensive, we believe it is valuable to reprint this book, so all the books illustrated by this great artist are readily available.

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