The Savoy (periodical)

"This article is about the former British magazine, for other uses, see Savoy (disambiguation)"

The Savoy was a magazine of literature, art, and criticism published during the year 1896 in London. It featured work by authors such as W. B. Yeats, Joseph Conrad, and Aubrey Beardsley.

Only eight issues of the magazine were published. The publisher was Leonard Smithers, a controversial friend of Oscar Wilde who was also known as a pornographer. Among other publications by Smithers were rare erotic works and unique items such as books bound in human skin. [ [http://www.savoy.abel.co.uk/1history.html History of "The Savoy"] ]

The magazine was started by Smithers, writer Arthur Symons (The Symbolist Movement In Literature) and artist Aubrey Beardsley. It is considered a Little magazine, and was described as "a manifesto in revolt against Victorian materialism". [ [http://www.bartleby.com/65/li/littlema.html The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition] ]

Symons attempted to distance the magazine from the "decadent" and imprisoned Oscar Wilde by writing, "We are not Realists, or Romanticists, or Decadents" in his editorial note in the first issue. However, he went on to write, "For us, all art is good which is good art," which is very similar to the Decadent creed of "art for art's sake." [ [http://www.dur.ac.uk/postgraduate.english/Tildesley.htm "The Shadow of Oscar Wilde: A Study of Subversive and Clandestine Sexuality in Four Novellas from The Savoy" by Matthew Brinton Tildesley] ]

References