NINES Tutorial: The Yellow 90s

“It was a poisonous book” (92).  Anyone who has read Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Pictures of Dorian Gray, may wonder what was so threatening about the “yellowbook” that occupied the fascination of Dorian Gray.  Although it’s not named in Wilde’s text, the yellowbook is supposedly based on the French novel, À Rebours, by Joris-Karl Huysmans.  A few years after The Pictures of Dorian Gray was published, The Yellow Book – a literary magazine – came into production and was arguably inspired by Wilde’s novel.  As discussed in our Literary Eras course, many people began to assume that this magazine was the yellowbook that poisoned the mind of Dorian.  If someone could not read French, or had not heard of À Rebours, it’s understandable that the yellow-covered magazine was mistaken for the infamous book.  As someone who loves Wilde’s novel, and can’t speak or read French, I can’t help but wonder what kind of material existed in the volumes of The Yellow Book that could be considered poisonous?

Fortunately, one does not need a time machine to find out.  An online database exists with multiple volumes of the magazine for the public’s perusal.  The Yellow Nineties Online is an electronic resource edited by Dennis Denisoff and Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, and as stated on the site it, “ … gives immediate open access to historical documents, while preserving, in a regularly updated virtual form, periodicals in danger of disintegration due to their crumbling, pulp-based and chemical-bleached paper.”  The site focuses mostly on The Yellow Book, which it considers the “defining document of the decade it coloured,” – that decade being the 1890s – but the site also includes other avant-garde magazines such as The Pagan Review and The Evergreen.  A simple layout, with easy-to-access material, The Yellow Nineties Online is a rich database that allows its users to explore coveted resources from the end of the nineteenth century.

Seeing as it’s the site’s main focus, we’ll examine how to locate the The Yellow Book and some of its functionality.  On the homepage, a bar runs across the top with the following options: “Home,” “About,” “The Yellow Book,” “Other Yellow Nineties Texts,” “Biographies,” and “Search.”  Click on the third option: “The Yellow Book.”  A drop-down menu will appear – select “Volumes.”

Thirteen volumes are available that span from April of 1894 to April of 1897.  We’ll explore the first manuscript, labeled, “Volume 1,” written in April of 1894.  There are multiple options that accompany the volume.

By selecting the “Scholarly Introduction” (in HTML, XML or PDF) you can read an introduction that is meant to help users contextualize the material.

The next option you can select is the “Table of Contents” (in HTML, XML or PDF).

Here you have access to each individual story that exists in the volume, and by clicking on the title, you can view the specific story.  Many of the writers are linked to personal biographies (if a title or name is underlined, that means you can click on it for more information).  The same is true for the pictures and artists listed after the stories.

Lastly, you can peruse the digitalized copy of the volume itself (HTML, XML, PDF or Flipbook).  I recommend checking out the Flipbook version.

In Wide’s novel, Dorian is mesmerized within minutes of starting to read the yellowbook: “It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb show before him.  Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real to him.  Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually revealed” (91).  Images and stories unveiled the secrets of the world to Dorian, and I believe that Frederic Leighton’s picture, “A Study,” was the exact type of image that could have captivated the character’s attention.

There is a double of Dorian in the text – the painting created by Basil Hallward – and so the idea of doubles and specifically how they can haunt you is captured by Leighton.  This picture may have been the type of content that he had “dimly dreamed of” made real, because it could have helped him understand the ways in which his painting was able to change if he believed the painting was his double.

When Dorian first reads the yellowbook, his fiancé, Sibyl Vane, has recently committed suicide.  Their short-lived engagement was a product of how enchanting of an actress he found her to be.  The first night he sees her act she is playing the role of Juliet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  In “Volume 1” of the The Yellow Book, there is a poem by Arthur Symons titled, “Stella Maris,” that most surely would have created a sensation within Dorian.  Symons begins his poem by discussing the randomness of the speaker and his lady meeting:

 

 

WHY is it I remember yet

You, of all women one has met

In random wayfare, as one meets

The chance romances of the street?,

The Juliet of a night? I know

Your heart holds many a Romeo. (1-6)

Dorian went into the theatre Sybil was an actress of on a whim and ultimately fell in love – it was a “chance romance.”  The poem goes on to state that the couple only was able to spend one night in marital bliss, and while Dorian and Sybil never married or consummated their love, their romance too was short-lived seeing as it only lasted only a few weeks.  Just as one of the lovers lost interest in the poem, Dorian falls out of love when Sybl stops living up to the illusion he has created of her.  Symons’ poem and Wilde’s novel showcase that these fleeting romances are a trope in Victorian literature.

Volumes of The Yellow Book include an array of short stories, plays, poems and pictures.  When looking through “Volume 1” as a Flipbook, I was able to experience how one can become absorbed in the text, and be influenced by both the words and drawings in their various forms.  Flipping through, I came across Laurence Housman’s picture, “The Reflected Faun.”

The imagery shows a creature that looks semi-human kissing a flower.  He is standing over a creek, and in the water, his reflection is kissing what appears to be a beautiful maiden.  When Dorian refers to the yellowbook as poisonous, this image allowed me to understand in part his reasons for feeling so.  Housman’s illustration showcases the fascination with beauty all creatures possess, and specifically, how disillusioned humanity can become when the fascination becomes obsession.  The reflection of the faun is living a better life than the original, and if this reflection is a manifestation of the faun’s hidden desires, the painting’s message may be a warning regarding the dangers of spending time fantasizing about life rather than living it: the fantasy may poison reality.  After spending multiple years of letting volumes of the yellowbook dominant his life, Dorian becomes obsessed with comparing his reflected image to his painted image: “Often, on returning home … he himself would creep upstairs to the locked room, open the door with the key that never left him now, and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him, looking now at the evil and aging face on the canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him from the polished glass.  The very sharpness of the contrast used to quicken his sense of pleasure” (93).  Dorian is obsessed with both his reflection (that does not age) and a portrait (that does), and it’s difficult to ascertain if either version is the “real” Dorian.  By looking at the type of content that influenced this character, one can better analyze the motives and innermost desires that shaped his progression into a more sinister being.

Anyone who wants to access the popular culture of the 1890s should spend some time on The Yellow Nineties Online.  Whether you’re looking for original material from the Victorian period, or just like to read some exciting short stories, the site has an assortment of options to choose from.  While you might not find any volumes of The Yellow Book to be poisonous, you most likely will find them all to be quite fascinating.

Works Cited:

Denisoff, Dennis and Lorraine Janzen Kooistra. The Yellow Nineties Online. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ed. Philip Smith. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1993. Print.