Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (1872-98), an English illustrator, a decadent and rebellious fin de siecle dandy had a lasting impact on Art Nouveau. In just a few years he created a unique lexicon of carnal knowledge in pen and ink and, wielding his remarkable graphic talent like a scalpel, sliced through the hypocrisy of Victorian society. In 1894 he became the rage with the publication of his illustrations to the English version of Oscar Wilde’s Salome and the appearance of the first issue of The Yellow Book, a quarterly periodical of which he was art editor. Beardsley's work is looked at alongside the work of contemporaries such as Oscar Wilde, Max Beerbohm and W.B. Yeats and against the backdrop of the artistic, literary and social life of fin-de-siecle London, Dieppe and Paris. In spite of his ill health and early death due at 25 due to tuberculosis, Beardsley’s output was prodigious.