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A review by ivyninareads
The Yellow Book by Edmund Gosse, W.B. Yeats, Katherine De Mattos, Arnold Bennett, John Buchan, Arthur Symons, Ella D'Arcy, Ernest Leverson
3.0
I think I bought this book in 2017? I am absolutely PURGING my physical tbr at the moment. In saying that, I went into this book with absolutely no idea of what I was getting into and was quite pleased to find it to be somewhat of an archive of stories, poems and art from The Yellow Book, a magazine first published in 1894. The history behind the original publication was very intriguing as this magazine was considered very scandalous, hedonistic, overly-decadent and immoral. For me, this meant getting to see what things were considered wildly inappropriate and unprincipled for heightened society at the end of the 19th century.
All in all, this collection was pretty good. There were a couple of parts that were a little slow, but considering that most of the works were quite short, this never really lasted very long. I really loved the artworks in this lil book, I found them to be quite beautiful. The book is a product of it's time so there are a couple of instances of misogyny. However – and quite interestingly – the story that I found to present the most misogyny, which was The Pleasure-Pilgrim, was written by a woman: Ella D'Arcy. And although she may not have been, to me it particularly seemed as though she was using these instances to make comment on what the double standards between men and women were like at the time.
Definitely engaging to read to get a taste of what was hot at the turn of the so-called 'yellow nineties'. Solid three stars. Maybe even a bit more. Maybe like, 3.5 or something :)
All in all, this collection was pretty good. There were a couple of parts that were a little slow, but considering that most of the works were quite short, this never really lasted very long. I really loved the artworks in this lil book, I found them to be quite beautiful. The book is a product of it's time so there are a couple of instances of misogyny. However – and quite interestingly – the story that I found to present the most misogyny, which was The Pleasure-Pilgrim, was written by a woman: Ella D'Arcy. And although she may not have been, to me it particularly seemed as though she was using these instances to make comment on what the double standards between men and women were like at the time.
Definitely engaging to read to get a taste of what was hot at the turn of the so-called 'yellow nineties'. Solid three stars. Maybe even a bit more. Maybe like, 3.5 or something :)