Aubrey Beardsley

Born in 1872, Aubrey Beardsley was an English illustrator and author who contributed to the Aesthetic and Art Nouveau movements. After completing grammar school, Beardsley worked at an architect's office and insurance company for a time before attending the Westminster School of Art in 1892. He later co-founded The Yellow Book, an influential illustrated quarterly. Many of his illustrations were grotesque and erotic. Though he was a great friend of Oscar Wilde, Beardsley was generally regarded as asexual and was completely devoted to his work. Due to chronic lung hemorrhaging, he was often unable to leave his home. A year before his death, Beardsley converted to Catholicism and begged his publisher to destroy his more obscene drawings, to which Leonard Smithers refused. Beardsley died of tuberculosis in 1898.