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''The Yellow Book'', published in London from 1894 to 1897 by Elkin Mathews and John Lane, later by John Lane alone, and edited by the American Henry Harland, was a quarterly literary periodical (priced at 5s.) that lent its name to the "Yellow Nineties". It was a leading journal of the British 1890s; to some degree associated with Aestheticism and Decadence, the magazine contained a wide range of literary and artistic genres, poetry, short stories, essays, book illustrations, portraits, and reproductions of paintings. Aubrey Beardsley was its first art editor, and he has been credited with the idea of the yellow cover, with its association with illicit French fiction of the period. He obtained works by such artists as Charles Conder, William Rothenstein, John Singer Sargent, Walter Sickert, and Philip Wilson Steer. The literary content was no less distinguished; authors who contributed were: Max Beerbohm, Arnold Bennett, "Baron Corvo", Ernest Dowson, George Gissing, Sir Edmund Gosse, Henry James, Richard Le Gallienne, Charlotte Mew, Arthur Symons, H. G. Wells, William Butler Yeats. Though Oscar Wilde never published anything within its pages, it was linked to him because Beardsley had illustrated his ''Salomé'' and because he was on friendly terms with many of the contributors. Moreover, in Wilde's ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'' (1891), a major corrupting influence on Dorian is "the yellow book" which Lord Henry sends over to amuse him after the suicide of his first love. This "yellow book" is understood by critics to be ''À rebours'' by Joris-Karl Huysmans, a representative work of Parisian decadence that heavily influenced British aesthetes like Beardsley. Such books in Paris were wrapped in yellow paper to alert the reader to their lascivious content. It is not clear, however, whether ''Dorian Gray'' is the direct source for the review's title. Soon after Wilde was arrested in April 1895 Beardsley was dismissed as the periodical's art editor; his post taken over by the publisher, John Lane, assisted by another artist, Patten Wilson. Although critics have contended that the quality of its contents declined after Beardsley left and that ''The Yellow Book'' became a vehicle for promoting the work of Lane's authors, a remarkably high standard in both art and literature was maintained until the periodical ceased publication in the spring of 1897. A notable feature was the inclusion of work by women writers and illustrators, among them Ella D'Arcy and Ethel Colburn Mayne (both also served as Harland's subeditors), George Egerton, Rosamund Marriott Watson, Ada Leverson, Netta and Nellie Syrett, and Ethel Reed. Perhaps indicative of ''The Yellow Book'''s past significance in literary circles of its day is a reference to it in a fictional piece thirty-three years after it ceased publication. American author Willa Cather noted its presence in the personal library of one of her characters in the short story, "Double Birthday", noting that it had lost its "power to seduce and stimulate". ''The Yellow Book'' differed from other periodicals in that it was issued clothbound, made a strict distinction between the literary and art contents (only in one or two instances were these connected), did not include serial fiction, and contained no advertisements except publishers' lists. ==Initial reception== ''The Yellow Book'''s brilliant color immediately associated the periodical with illicit French novels - an anticipation, many thought, of the scurrilous content inside. The article 'A Defence of Cosmetics' by Max Beerbohm appeared in the first volume, causing something of a sensation and establishing his reputation. Yet generally ''The Yellow Book'''s first list of contributors bespoke a non-radical, typically conservative collection of authors: Edmund Gosse, Walter Crane, Frederick Leighton, and Henry James among others. Upon its publication, Oscar Wilde dismissed ''The Yellow Book'' as "not yellow at all".〔Weintraub, Stanley. "Introduction", ''The Yellow Book: Quintessence of the Nineties'' (New York: Doubleday, 1964), p. xvi.〕 In ''The Romantic '90s'', Richard Le Gallienne, a poet identified with the New Literature of the Decadence, described ''The Yellow Book'' as the following: "''The Yellow Book'' was certainly novel, even striking, but except for the drawings and decorations by Beardsley, which, seen thus for the first time, not unnaturally affected most people as at once startling, repellent, and fascinating, it is hard to realize why it should have seemed so shocking. But the public is an instinctive creature, not half so stupid as is usually taken for granted. It evidently scented something queer and rather alarming about the strange new quarterly, and thus it almost immediately regarded it as symbolic of new movements which it only partially represented".〔Le Gallienne, Richard. ''The Romantic '90s'' (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1925), p. 227. 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