“As he was arrested [in 1895, for homosexual acts, Oscar] Wilde was spotted carrying a yellow book—in fact a yellow-backed French novel, but reported in the press as The Yellow Book. That reference and Wilde’s and Beardsley’s erstwhile collaboration on Salome were enough to besmirch [Aubrey] Beardsley in the scandal. . . .

Hostile stone-throwing mobs gathered outside the offices of The Yellow Book’s publisher John Lane, and several of Lane’s authors—fearful for their own reputations—demanded Beardsley’s dismissal. Overnight from being the illustrator most in demand, his name had become a byword for degeneracy: he was at once almost unemployable.”

—Patrick Bade, Aubrey Beardsley, 2001.