An Illustrator of Decadence

March 8, 2012 8:36 AM

Best known for his 1929 illustrations of Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire (translated here); Beresford Egan (wiki) also illustrated the dust jacket for Aleister Crowley´s Moonchild.
The year previously he published an illustrated parody on the banning of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness.
In 1934 he published But the Sinners Triumph. His first wife was Catherine Bower Alcock aka Brian De Shane.
posted by adamvasco (6 comments total)

It never occurred to me that Les Fleurs du Mal needed to be illustrated, but I do like Egan's early-century style. I wonder if the look of Twilight Zone episode "The Masks" was at all inspired by him.
posted by jabberjaw at 9:16 AM on March 8, 2012

Fantastic, I’ve never heard of him.
posted by bongo_x at 9:35 AM on March 8, 2012

::grabs the internet by the lapels, shakes vigorously::

PRINTS, MAN! I NEED TO BUY PRINTS! WHERE ARE THEY?
posted by FatherDagon at 10:55 AM on March 8, 2012 [1 favorite]

$761 and rising
posted by adamvasco at 2:05 PM on March 8, 2012

Third link, "Charles Baudelaire" (fleursdumal.org), Avast claims there is a Trojan Downloader.
posted by Xoebe at 4:22 PM on March 8, 2012

I can recommend Adrian Woodhouse’s book Beresford Egan for those interested in his work. To my taste, his illustrations for But The Sinners Triumph are about the best of his œuvre.

Apparently, But the Sinners Triumph is a fictionalised account of the fortunes of ‘Anna Beryl’ (Catherine Bower Alcock) before her fateful meeting with ‘Lance Daurimer’ (Egan). The novel is a prequel to his ‘determinedly decadent’ debut novel Pollen: A Novel in Black and White (1932).
posted by misteraitch at 8:27 AM on March 9, 2012