Under the Hill

The tragic life of Aubrey Beardsley (illustrator of The Yellow Book, and Oscar Wilde's Salome) was, in addition to his untimely death at age 25, further marred by censorship. The famed illustrator had compiled his erotic text Story of Venus and Tannhauser into a couple of underground editions, but was only able to publish expurgated versions of the work in a magazine known as The Savoy--Beardsley was dismissed from the Yellow Book, a publication he had helped found, because of his friendship with Wilde, when the latter was seen holding a yellow book prior to his arrest on charges of homosexuality. Luckily Miles Underwood, author of The English Governess, has joined Beardsley's illustrations with the deceased author's unfinished manuscripts of the story. Adding in his own bits here and there, voila, we have Under the Hill, a kind of fairy tale for adults, featuring Tannhauser, a German hero of myth and Venus, goddess of love, plus some wild parties, and sex without repercussion.