Aubrey Beardsley

At school, Aubrey Beardsley caricatured his masters—and they admired the drawings. Before the art world took notice, this shy, often-ill boy staged plays, decorated menus for pocket money, and began writing a history of the Armada.

In late-Victorian Brighton and London, Robert Baldwin Ross follows Beardsley from school performances to the first signs of an artist finding his own powers. Illness interrupts his drawing, but after his health improves, he fills his days with illustrations to plays and brings a portfolio to Ross in 1892. Encouragement from artists and patrons helps put his work before the public, while Beardsley’s reserve, wit, and appetite for life defy the image of a fragile prodigy. What did Ross see in that first portfolio—and what would make Beardsley impossible to overlook?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.