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Our editorial method is informed by social-text editing principles. By “text” we mean verbal and visual printed material, including non-referential physical elements such as bindings, page layouts, and ornaments. We view any text as the outcome of collaborative processes that have specific manifestations at precise historical moments. The Yellow Nineties Online publishes facsimile editions of a select collection of fin-de- siècle aesthetic periodicals, together with paratexts of production and reception such as cover designs, advertising materials, and reviews. This historical material is enhanced by two kinds of peer-reviewed scholarly commentary: biographies of the periodicals’ contributors and associates; and critical introductions to each title and volume by experts in the field. All scholarly material on the site is vetted by the editor(s) and peer- reviewed by them and/or an international board of advisors. The site as a whole is peer- reviewed by NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship). Contributors to the site retain personal copyright in their material. The site is licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license. Both primary and secondary materials, including all visual images, are marked up in TEI- (Textual-Encoding Initiative) compliant XML (Extensible Markup Language). To ensure maximum flexibility for users, magazines are available on the site as virtual objects (facsimiles) in FlipBook form; in HTML for online reading; in PDF for downloading and collecting; and in XML for those who wish to review and/or adapt our tag sets. In order to make ornamental devices, such as initial letters, head- and tail- pieces, searchable, we have developed a Database of Ornament in OMEKA, and linked it to the relevant pages of each magazine edition. As a dynamic structure, a scholarly website is always in process; Phase One of The Yellow Nineties Online (2010-2015) is completed and Phase Two (2016-2021) is underway.
A designer, poet, stained-glass artist, typographer, and scholar, Selwyn Image
embodied the Victorian polymath ideal, but is better remembered for his
influence and network than for his own artistic productions. His “actual
handiwork might bulk small in a retrospective exhibition of late Victorian art,”
declared
Image was born on 17 November 1849 in Bodiam, Sussex, where his father was vicar.
He was educated at Brighton College and Marlborough College before matriculating
at New College, Oxford. He intended to follow his father into the church, though
his introduction to John Ruskin (1819-1900) shaped the direction of his studies
and future career. Ruskin had taken up the first Slade Professorship of Fine Art
in 1869, and Image began studying under him the following year. Buoyed by
Ruskin’s encouragement, Image wrote to his older brother John in 1871:
Ruskin remained a profound
influence throughout Image’s life, though in the short term, at least, the
younger man did pursue a more stable career as a clergyman. Image was ordained
Deacon in December 1872, the same month he was awarded his degree. The following
year he was ordained priest, and took up his MA, yet the lure of the artistic
life remained. He served as a cleric in London until 1880—whether he elected to
leave or was fired remains unclear—after which point he turned his attention
more fully to art. Lacking an independent income, Image cobbled together design
work and other small commissions, along with occasional speakers’ fees, to
sustain himself and his craft.
In 1878, Image met and became close friends with architect and designer Arthur
Heygate Mackmurdo (1851-1942). Four years later, they would join with Herbert P.
Horne (1864-1916) to form the Century Guild, a group of artisans dedicated to
the unity of the arts and the promotion (including the commercial promotion) of
their crafts. Small but influential—the group’s formal membership never exceeded
the original three—the Guild produced a beautifully designed journal,
In an indication of Image’s position within the fin-de-siècle artistic circles,
his name was included among a list of contributors to
Throughout this and other work, Image’s commitment to the idea of the unity of
the arts vaunted by the Century Guild remained consistent. He was a member of
the Art Workers’ Guild from 1887, serving on the general committee from 1889-91
and as Master in 1900. In an address to its membership on the twenty-fifth
anniversary of its founding, Image reflected that, “The central idea, the
vivifying principle, which so appealed to our Founders, was the idea, the
principle, unity, the interdependence, the solidarity of all the arts” (Stamp
3). He was equally committed to anti-puritan causes, perhaps most famously
culminating in his support for Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
during his 1895 criminal trial for “acts of gross indecency.” Image and Wilde’s
paths intersected as early as 1887, when Wilde reviewed Image’s series of
lectures on art, praising them in the
In 1910, Image took up the Slade Professorship of Fine Art at Oxford, a role he
held until 1916, when it was suspended due to the First World War. He continued
to lecture and to contribute to the cause of arts education until his health
failed in the year preceding his death on 21 August 1930. A memorial exhibition
of his drawings and stained-glass designs was held at the Cotswold Gallery in
London in November and December of that year. In the preface to the catalogue,
Binyon praised the “severity,” “inward grace,” and “subtle, pervading sense of
beauty,” of his designs (n.p.), and suggested that Image would ultimately be
remembered for his stained-glass work. The catalogue closed with a sonnet by
fellow poet and artist (and frequent contributor to
© 2021 Rebecca N. Mitchell, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom