The drawings are shocking but not depraving" (Muir, 186-87). Aristophanes would probably have thought them uproarious. This Beardsley illustrated with Gargantuan emphases. Neither is the play, which is concerned with copulation and war and the women's threat to discontinue the former during the continuance of the latter. Moreover there is nothing unwholesome or suggestive about them: although the portfolio was certainly not to be left lying about on the coffee table. "Regarded as drawings, are supremely accomplished. Lysistrata is "the most outrageous of Beardsley's major books… the masterpiece of his later style" (Ray 316). Limited edition, one of 750 copies, with mounted frontispiece illustration and eight mounted erotic plates by Beardsley. Quarto, original half black and silver cloth, patterned endpapers, uncut. "OPENLY LICENTIOUS": BEARDSLEY'S ILLUSTRATED LYSISTRATA
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