Yellow Book of Stanley V Makower

Stanley Victor Makower was born in 1873 in London, the son of German Jewish immigrants. He was educated at University College and Trinity College, Cambridge. After university, he was called to the bar but never practiced. Instead, he turned to literature. With university classmates Oswald Sickert and A. Myers Smith, he wrote The Passing of a Mood (1893) for Unwin's Pseudonym Library. His debut novel 'The Mirror of Music' (1895) to John Lane's Keynotes series and contributed stories to The Yellow Book. Makower followed these works with four further novels, contributions to the Times, and a brief history of the newspaper. He married Maria Agnes Brugger in 1905 in Switzerland and the couple had four children. Makower died at the early age of 40 in 1911.During the Victorian era the publishing of magazines and periodicals accelerated at a phenomenal rate. This really was mass market publishing to a hungry audience eager for literary sustenance. Many of our greatest authors contributed and expanded their reach whilst many fledging authors also found a ready source for their nascent works and careers.Amongst the very many was 'The Yellow Book'. Although titled as 'An Illustrated Quarterly' it was sold as a cloth-bound hardback and within were short stories, essays, poetry, illustrations and portraits. It was edited by the American author Henry Harland, who also contributed, and its art editor was no less that the formidable Aubrey Beardsley, the enfant terrible of illustration.Its yellow cover and name gave it an association with the risque and erotic yellow covered works published in France. It was a visual shorthand for ideas that would push many boundaries of Society to more open interpretations. Being complete in each volume and slightly aloof it stayed away from serialised fiction and advertisements. Within each lavishly illustrated edition were literary offerings that included works by such luminaries as Henry James, H G Wells, W B Yeats, Edith Nesbit, George Gissing and many others from the ascetic and decadent movements of the time. The other notable inclusion was women both as contributors and amongst its editing staff, which was at odds with the then patriarchal gender norms. Although it only survived for 13 issues its reach and influence were second to none.