Aestheticism, Materiality, and Queer Books
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Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 7-24-2014 12:00 AM The Book Beautiful: Aestheticism, Materiality, and Queer Books Frederick D. King The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Dr. Christopher Keep The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Frederick D. King 2014 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation King, Frederick D., "The Book Beautiful: Aestheticism, Materiality, and Queer Books" (2014). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 2368. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/2368 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE BOOK BEAUTIFUL AESTHETICISM, MATERIALITY AND QUEER BOOKS (Monograph) By Frederick D. King Graduate Program Department of English A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Frederick D. King 2014 i Abstract The Book Beautiful: Aestheticism, Materiality, and Queer Books studies the multimedial art of decorated books of the British Aesthetic Movement (1880-1900). Incorporating textual scholarship and queer theory, the project considers how the language of sexual intercourse, as it was expressed through Aestheticism’s conception of Eros, influenced a textual intercourse between literary content and bibliographical design. Paying particular attention to the influence of book design, typography, and illustration, the decorated book is reread as a total work of art that is realised when diverse concepts of beauty and eroticism are bound together in a single edition of a book. The result of these diverse artists collaborating on the creation of beautiful books for publishers The Bodley Head and Leonard Smithers Ltd., was a queer revision of literature as a material art form and of the book as a multimedial medium of creative expression capable of circulating a discourse of beauty and sexuality realised through the integration of literary and material creative expression. Chapter 1 places the emergence of the queer book in the history of the nineteenth century’s Revival of Printing, paying particular attention to the influence of William Morris’s work with the Kelmscott Press and what he called his “Ideal Book,” in order to demonstrate how the collaboration of Oscar Wilde, Charles Shannon, and Charles Ricketts on A House of Pomegranates expresses Aesthetic ideas of beauty within the material exigencies of industrial bookmaking practices. Chapter 2 looks at John Gray’s volume of poetry, Silverpoints as the product of a textual intercourse between the author and the book’s designer, Charles Ricketts, in order to explore how the performativity of Gray’s Aesthetic persona – an Aesthetic ideal momentarily realised in Gray’s recitation of his work – finds a life of its own in the material book. Chapter 3 revises Linda Dowling’s philological concept of the “fatal book” in order to read Oscar ii Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley’s bibliographical collaboration on Salome for The Bodley Head, as a Decadent ars erotica, a text that represents sexual dissidence as a sacred cultural discourse. Chapter 4 examines Leonard Smithers’s publication of The Savoy as a queer periodical by revising the act of reading as a masturbatory textual intercourse between contributors practicing self-reflexive critical analysis. The project concludes with a look at the sexual politics that leads to the demise of the queer book within British Aestheticism. Keywords Aestheticism; A House of Pomegranates; Arts and Crafts Movement; Arthur Symons; Aubrey Beardsley; The Bodley Head; Charles Ricketts; Charles Shannon; Chiswick Press; cultural materialism; cultural revision; cultural revolution; David McKitterick; Decadence; Elkin Mathews; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick; fin de siècle; Gérard Genette; heterosexuality; heterotextuality; homosexuality; ink; Jerome McGann; Johanna Drucker; John Gray; John Lane; Joseph Grigley; Judith Butler; the Kelmscott Press; Leonard Smithers; Michel Foucault; nineteenth-century book history; Oscar Wilde; Peter L. Shillingsburg; queer books; queer space; queer theory; reproductive futurism; Richard Altick; Salome; The Savoy; sexual discourse; sexuality; Silverpoints; textual intercourse; Walter Pater; William Morris; The Yellow Book. iii Acknowledgments An enormous amount of support from a variety of people and organizations went into the creation of my dissertation. I owe each of these people my everlasting gratitude and a pint. First, I would like to thank my Supervisor, Christopher Keep, for sharing his diverse knowledge of Victorian fin de siècle literature and culture, for his limitless support and encouragement through countless edits, and for his ruthless skills as a reader. I am a better scholar because of his support. I also owe a great deal of thanks to my second reader, Steven Bruhm, who introduced me to queer theory and who offered a graduate course on Oscar Wilde where I first developed my reading of Wilde’s Salome as a queer book. I owe a great deal to the many on-campus resources and administrators that have supported my research: Western’s Pride Library and its founder, James Miller, for introducing me to LGBT Studies and for the library’s valuable resources; the staff at Weldon Library for access to their archives and their patience finding old books in storage for me over the years; and, the staff at Western’s Archives Research and Collection Centre for access to their collection of numerous belle lettres from the 1890s. I would also like to thank the librarians and other staff members on both sides of the Atlantic for access and assistance with their valuable archives at the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds; the staff at John Johnson Printed Ephemera Collection at Oxford’s Bodleian Library and in particular Julie Anne Lambert, the Librarian of the John Johnson Printed Ephemera Collection for granting me access and permission to take photographs; the staff at the Radcliffe Science Library for the space and support to examine the ephemera; as well as the Bodleian Library’s Registration office; the staff at the British Library’s Rare Books and Music Reading Room and the Manuscripts Reading Room; the staff of the Harry Ransom Research and Collections Center at the University of Texas, Austin TX, for access and support while I studied the John Lane iv Company records and their rare book collection. I would like to thank the Department of English and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Western University for their generous support with a Graduate Thesis Research Award and a Faculty of Arts and Humanities Graduate Award that allowed me to fund various research trips. I would like thank antiquarian book dealer Marvin Post and his staff at Attic Books, especially Cassandra McVicar, who thought of me every time a book on book history, queer theory, or Victorian Studies came through their door and Kaily Giammarco, Store Manager at Attic Books, who also generously agreed to proofread my final thesis draft prior to submission. I also extend my thanks to other professors, scholars, colleagues and friends and organizations who have been enormous supports, both professionally and personally throughout the dissertation process: June Albert, Sandra Bell (UNBSJ), Mary Brodkorp (UNBSJ), Sally Colwell (Western), Vivian Foglton (Western), Jeremy Greenway (Western), Pamela Herrington Burnside, Alison Lee (Western), Annette Magid (SUNY), Sarah Maier (UNBSJ), James Noble (UNBSJ), Bryce Traister (Western), Leanne Trask (Western), Shelley Wasson, all of the contributors to the Internet Archive, the Victorian Reading Group @ Western, and the Victorian Studies Association of Ontario. My life is a miracle and I owe it to the love, support, and hard work of my parents, Marion and Murray King. Thank you for believing in me when no one else did. Finally, I would like to thank my husband and partner of almost two decades, James E. DuPlessis. James is my own personal librarian and proud co-owner of our two-thousand-plus-volume library; his passion for knowledge inspires my own every day. Thank you James for uprooting your life so that I could follow my dreams and become the scholar I am today: without you, none of this matters. v Table of Contents Abstract ii Table of Contents vi List of Figures viii List of Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 I What is a Queer Book? 1 I.1 How Can a Book Be Queer? 5 I.2 Aestheticism’s Queer Revision of Greek Eros 10 I.3 A Queer Theory of Textual Intercourse 17 I.4 Queer Books in Summation and the Project’s Organisation 29 Chapter 1 33 1 The Kelmscott Press and the Foundations of the Queer Book 33 1.1 The Revival of Beautiful Books 36 1.2 Building the Kelmscott Book 46 1.3 Binding Books: A Queer Reading of Morris’s Ideal Book 52 1.4 A Queer Redeployment of the Ideal Book 59 Chapter 2 73 2 Silverpoints: Textual Intercourse and the Aesthete Poet 74 2.1 The Poetics of a Textual Liaison 78 2.2 The Performative Body of the Aesthete Poet (i.e. the Book) 87 2.3 The Textual Intercourse of Gray, Ricketts, and Wilde 96 2.4 Penetrating the Aesthete