Yellow Nineties – Toronto Metropolitan University Archives & Special Collections

Posted on April 11, 2024 by olivia.wong

Black and white print of three women with ornamental wings — Flower of the Grass Headpiece by John Duncan from the Yellow Nineties 2.0 Database of Ornaments

Do you know the Yellow Nineties 2.0 database? It is an open-access resource dedicated to the study of eight late-Victorian “little magazines” produced between 1889 and 1905. The brief period is known as the “Yellow Nineties” after The Yellow Book, a controversial quarterly publication that embodied the “decadent” culture of the fin de siècle.

Toronto Metropolitan University professor Lorraine Janzen Kooistra spearheaded the Yellow Nineties 2.0 website, a digitization project that has evolved into a world-class online database composed of searchable editions of each publication, a database of textual ornaments found in the issues, peer-reviewed essays on the “little magazine” contributors and much more research on the period and the people who produced these works. The scholarly site is dedicated to the study of The Yellow Book, The Dial, The Pagan Review, The Evergreen, The Savoy, The Pageant, The Green Sheaf and The Venture. Many of the physical publications held at Toronto Metropolitan University Libraries Special Collections were digitized to create online versions for the database.

To celebrate the Yellow Nineties 2.0’s completion, TMU’s Special Collections is hosting an exhibition until the end of April 2024 showcasing the Victorian “little magazines” in our holdings.

Black and white print of the spring almanac with images representing the astrological signs — Spring Almanac by Helen Hay from the Yellow Nineties 2.0 Database of Ornaments

Over the years, the “little magazines” held in Special Collections alongside the Yellow Nineties 2.0 database have facilitated interactive student workshops and research creation through TMU’s English department among other partnerships on campus. Explore the Y90s Classroom website to learn more about the research and exhibitions created using these collections.

Student have shared their initial reactions after being introduced to the Yellow Nineties 2.0 and the physical copies held at TMU Special Collections below:

What a treat to hold a piece of art and literary history in your hands! Interacting with the collection online and in person is like night and day – they complement each other. While the online collection is wonderful for facilitating remote research, these magazines truly are art objects and must be appreciated in their proper, corporeal form. Nothing can compare to the opportunity to interact with the item itself. It’s a tremendous privilege to reach into the past and touch the same pages that were lovingly designed, printed, and bound, by literature lovers of the past. While there are no time-machines at TMU, historical literary collections are the next best thing.
Cameron Wheeler, TMU English Department Student

black and white print of three flowers — Spring in Languedoc by Alice Gray from the Yellow Nineties 2.0 Database of Ornaments

History preserved in time—a glimpse at the lives and creative pursuits of those who lived over a century before us.

It was very interesting to me that quite a large amount of the pages in some of the magazines were white, compared to present-day magazines which cover every single empty space with something. This really allows the reader to focus their attention on the sole thing that the page is presenting to them, whether it be a short story, a poem or a piece of art.
Erik Tahiliani, TMU English Department Student

page from The Evergreen with a poem titled Love Shall Stay — Love Shall Stay by Margaret Armour from The Evergreen, Autumn 1895

To view the current exhibition 1890s Little Magazines: Art for Art’s Sake in Print , visit us on the 4th floor of the TMU Libraries Building. The current exhibition, available until April 30th 2024, features several of the “Little Magazines” held at TMU Special Collections, including The Dial, The Yellow Book, The Evergreen, The Savoy, The Pageant and The Venture.

Posted on March 22, 2024 by olivia.wong

by Holly Forsythe Paul

After the great success of the Kelmscott Press under the direction of William Morris (1834-1896), artists and bookmakers recognized that there was a niche audience willing to buy expensive books with daring or progressive subject matter as long as they were beautiful.

This change in the notion of the reading public, its taste and, particularly, its morality, liberated artists to make increasingly exotic books and periodicals. The ‘little magazines’ of the 1890s sprang up in this context. Beautifully designed and illustrated, they embody a different set of values from those we associate with Victorian orthodoxy: celebrating gendered, sexual, regional, or social alternatives.

Printing changed in the 1890s, starting with the Pre Raphaelite concept of total book design, and the Arts & Crafts return to artisanal craftsmanship. High-quality volumes could be sold for very high prices and no longer needed a mass audience in order to become financially viable productions. First-rate artists were drawn from the canvas to the page as technological developments gave them more control and the development of a niche, connoisseur audience gave them more thematic flexibility. The “Little Magazines” of the 1890s are among the most prized results: an outburst of sophisticated, beautiful publications by the most talented, avant-garde artists of the Aesthetic Movement.

The current exhibition, available until April 30th 2024, features several of the “Little Magazines” held at TMU Special Collections, including The Dial, The Yellow Book, The Evergreen, The Savoy, The Pageant and The Venture.

The Dial: An Occasional Publication (5 issues, 1889-1897)

Produced by joint editors Charles Ricketts (1866-1931) and Charles Shannon, The Dial featured art and literature, much of it produced by a core bohemian circle who congregated at Ricketts and Shannon’s home. Unlike most Art Nouveau magazines, The Dial prominently features wood engraving and lithography, illustrative techniques in which the artist controls the means of production. Although only five issues were produced by a small group of artists for a niche audience. the artisanal integrity and harmonious design of The Dial had a major impact, influencing a revival in wood engraving and leading to Ricketts’s founding of The Vale Press (1896-1904).

The Yellow Book: An Illustrated Quarterly (13 issues, 1894-1897)

The Yellow Book embodies the “decadent” culture of the fin de siècle. Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) proposed a quarterly that would focus equally on art and literature to the publisher John Lane (1854-1925) with Beardsley as art editor & principal artist while Henry Harland (1861-1905) acted as literary editor. Taking the colour yellow as a nod to risqué Continental literature and producing grotesque and suggestive images designed to shock the uninitiated, Beardsley courted controversy and found it. Fearful of Beardsley’s association with Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) when the latter was arrested for “gross indecency,” Lane fired Beardsley. The change from daring to conservative content that starts with the fifth issue highlights Beardsley’s impact on the early volumes.

The Evergreen (4 issues, 1895-1896/7)

Reflecting the diverse concerns of its polymath sponsor, Patrick Geddes (1854-1932), The Evergreen blends interests in ecology and urban renewal with a celebration of the Scottish Renascence and the Celtic revival.

These conservationist & post-colonial priorities are manifest in the periodical’s appearance, particularly its type. The Evergreen was printed by Edinburgh’s foremost arts-and-crafts printer, Walter Blaikie (1848-1928), and deliberately revives Celtic art in its ornaments. Copies bearing the coloured leather bindings designed by Charles Mackie (1862-1920), with a stylized tree on the upper cover, are especially prized.

The Savoy (8 volumes, 1896)

When Aubrey Beardsley was fired from his role editing The Yellow Book, Leonard Smithers (1861-1907) seized the opportunity to enlist the talented artist. Like The Yellow Book, The Savoy combined art and literature, and adopted the format of the book, with stiff board covers, high-quality paper, and fine illustrations. In its pages, we can trace Beardsley’s departure from the influence of Japanese woodcuts to the rococo style of 18^th-century France, with much more fine detail and texture. After two quarterly issues, Smithers retooled The Savoy as a monthly magazine, changing its format, streamlining the contents, and lowering the price. Although it ultimately failed to find an audience, it is a remarkable attempt to extend avant-garde art to a wider public.

The Pageant (2 volumes, 1896 & 1897)

Edited by Charles Shannon (1863-1937) and Gleeson White (1851-1898), The Pageant connects the little magazines to the earlier genre of the Christmas Annual. Like the Ladies’ Annuals that had been a dominant genre in the book market in the 1830s, The Pageant offered reproductions of famous works of art in print. Unlike its predecessors, this avant-garde journal had a distinctly sophisticated & intellectual array of content, including art history, ancient myth, modern western culture, and decadent cosmopolitanism. In this respect, The Pageant connected the Aesthetic movement to a long tradition of European art.

The Venture: An Annual of Art and Literature (2 issues, 1903-1905)

The Venture was published by gallery owner John Baillie (1868-1926) and edited by Laurence Housman (1865-1959) and W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965). Determined to make The Venture into a “book beautiful”, Baillie enlisted James J. Guthrie (1874-1952) to print the letterpress and wood engravings of the first volume and Bernard Newdigate (1869-1944) to print the letterpress for volume two in collaboration with specialists in etchings, line blocks, lithographs, and photogravures.
The Venture is beautiful and notable for its high literary quality, but failed to find a large audience. As its title indicates, producing a high-brow annual was always imagined as a risk.

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