THE YELLOW BOOK REVIEWS
Mainstream periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic regularly reviewed little magazines in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some reviews would be fairly lengthy essays; others might only be a sentence or two in length; occasionally, the critic would compare one magazine to another. As was typical of the period, most reviews were published unsigned. This digital repository of historical reviews offers insight into the critical reception of Y90s magazines at the time of their production.
The Yellow Book, Volume 1
From Book Reviews: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
The varied opinions held by the English papers in regard to this new and most original quarterly make amusing reading. “If the New Art is represented by the cover of this wonderful volume,” says the Times, “it is scarcely calculated to attract by its intrinsic beauty or merit.”
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From Current Literature: “A Yellow Melancholy”
Unattributed
Of the new English quarterly, The Yellow Book, the original literary departure from the conventional magazine, and whose appearance is the literary sensation of the month, the London Speaker gives this review: In an advertisement affixed to The Yellow Book we learn that Messrs. Elkin Mathews and John Lane, of the Bodley Head, Vigo Street, London, W., “produce books so delightfully that it must give an added pleasure to the hoarding of first editions.”
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From St. James Gazette: “The Yellow Book”
Unattributed
IT will be curious to see how the Yellow Book takes with the public. The first number is a curious mixture of clevernesses—some good, others (as we hold) bad. At any rate, it is a very queer new sort of quarterly.
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From The Academy: “The Yellow Book”
Frederick Wedmore
MESSRS. ELKIN MATHEWS & JOHN LANE have issued the first number of The Yellow Book, a new and bulky and well-printed miscellany, which is to be published once a quarter. Its cover, I am sorry to say, might go a long way to damn it as a serious venture for tasteful people can only suppose that the design was a joke of a third-rate order, sent back as unacceptable from the office of Pick-me-up.
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From The Cambridge Review: “The Yellow Book”
C.H.S.M.
“The Yellow Book as the representative of English Literature and Art.” The Yellow Book has now been before the public for some time, but echoes of the laughter with which it was pretty generally greeted are still lingering on, and will in all probability continue to linger for some time to come.
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From The Cosmopolitan: “In the World of Art and Letters”
Andrew Long
THE very newest thing in literature which aims at being light is “The Yellow Book” (Lane and Matthews). I do not pretend to understand the literary aims of “The Yellow Book,” if it has any in particular. To some extent it is an advertisement, or manifesto, of several ingenious young men.
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From The Critic: “A Yellow Impertinence”
Unattributed
The Yellow Book is the Oscar Wilde of periodicals. With enough cleverness to be successful by legitimate methods, Mr. Wilde preferred to attract attention with his long hair and silk-encased calves. It is the same with The Yellow Book. Its contributors and illustrators are clever enough to catch the public attention by serious endeavour, but its editors prefer to attract more sudden attention by mountebank methods.
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From The Dial: “The Initial Number of the ‘Yellow Bookʼ”
Unattributed
The first number of the much heralded “Yellow Book” has appeared, Messrs. Copeland & Day being the American publishers. It is an illustrated quarterly magazine, edited by Mr. Henry Harland, and realizing in a measure the suggestion made by Mr. Howells in “A Hazard of New Fortunes.” That is, each number of the periodical is to be a cloth-bound book, complete in itself.
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From The Literary World: “London Letter”
Katherine Tynan Hinkson
The Yellow Book of Messrs. Matthews & Lane seems to have disappointed most of the reviewers. To my mind it is just a rather elaborate magazine, not differing greatly from other magazines except by displaying the eccentric influence of Mr. Aubrey Beardsley, which gives it its individuality.
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From The Nation: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
To do something new seems to have been the principal aim of the publishers of “The Yellow Book An illustrated Quarterly”(London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane Boston: Copeland & Day), vol. I. of which, for April, 1894, lies before us.
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From The National Observer: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
On Monday the great world did Messrs. Mathews and Lane, publishers, the honour to creak on its hinges: for it had been foretold that on that day a new planet—a star of modernity, a yellow asteroid, in fact—should swim into the ken of the nation which hitherto had sat in a most lamentable darkness. Never was the way of a magazine made so plain before it as The Yellow Book’s judicious advertisements planted and injudicious interviews watered.
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From The Westminster Gazette: “The Yellow Book”
Unattributed
The new quarterly, which calls itself the Yellow Book, contains about half-a-dozen of the silliest articles that have appeared anywhere for many months, and another half-dozen that are quite admirable. Among the latter are Mr. Henry James’s short story “The Death of the Lion,” Mr. William Watson’s two sonnets, the “Fool’s Hour, a Fragment of a Comedy,” which is the joint work of Mr. George Moore and John Oliver Hobbes, and Mr. George Sainsbury’s “Sentimental Cellar,” which is a pleasant conceit.
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From Vanity Fair: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
From Messrs. Elkin Mathews and John Lane there comes volume I. of the much-expected new quarterly, “The Yellow Book” and it comes in a wondrous ugly cover. It will be studied with subdued but none the less earnest joy by the New School of Art, or the New Schools, or individuals who magnify themselves into schools for is it not a precious thing?
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The Yellow Book, Volume 2
From Atlantic Monthly: “Comment on New Books”
Unattributed
Literature and Criticism. The Yellow Book, an Illustrated Quarterly. (Copeland & Day, Boston.) The merry-go-round of literary history brings back the old illustrated annual in this Yellow Book.
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From Chap-Book: “The Yellow Book”
Pierre La Rose
“TALKING of an acquaintance of ours,” writes the most quotable of biographers, “whose narratives . . . were unhappily found to be very fabulous I mentioned Lord Mansfield’s having said to me, ‘Suppose we believe one half of what he tells.ʼ ‘JOHNSON—ʼ ‘Ay but we don’t know which half to believe.ʼ ”
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From Chicago Daily Tribune: “Two Original Periodicals”
Unattributed
The Yellow Book, the second volume of which is just out, is thoroughly enjoyable. (London: Elkin Matthews & John Lane. Boston: Copeland & Day.) The ridicule heaped on this novelty in periodical literature seems to have been earned by its originality.
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From New York Times: “A Disappointing Book”
Unattributed
If to be incomprehensible means literary perfection, then the major part of the text of “The Yellow Book” accomplishes its mission. The most ambitious article is “The Coxon Fund,” written by Mr. Henry James. After many hours of serious toil, it is possible that a clever reader may discover that in Saltram the author wants to develop some passing episode in the life of a social sponge. All else is twaddle, meaningless, and waste of paper.
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From New York Times: “Current News of the Fine Arts”
Unattributed
The second volume of the Yellow Book has more amusing illustrations by the British artists who are trying to outdo Rops, Jossot, Iwels, and other Parisian fantastics.
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From Pall Mall Gazette: “The Second ‘Yellow Bookʼ”
Unattributed
IF the editors of the Yellow Book were not so wantonly anxious to be new and aggressive they would make a better product of their venture.
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From Poet-lore: “Some Literary Tendencies ‘Philip and His Wifeʼ and ‘The Yellow Bookʼ”
Unattributed
Maeterlinckʼs influence would seem to be felt in art, also, to a certain extent. I am sure anyone would be justified in taking the face which adorns the cover of the Yellow Book for a portrait of Mélisande, or rather of Mélisandeʼs hair.
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From St. James’s Gazette: “The Yellow Book”
Unattributed
OF the second number of the Yellow Book it may at once be acknowledged that it is a distinct improvement on the first. Mr. Aubrey Beardsley tries to frighten us with an ugly frontispiece but inside there will be found some altogether charming and pleasing specimens of Art.
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From The Academy: “Magazines and Reviews”
Unattributed
The second number of the Yellow Book (Matthews & Lane), though too bulky to be convenient, and far too full of “short” stories which are too diffuse to be short, is in some respects an improvement on the first number but the improvement, we are bound to say, is far more marked on the pictorial than on the literary side.
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From The Bookman: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
That the Yellow Book does not mean to represent any special school is the promising feature revealed by the second volume.
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From The Critic: “London Letter”
Arthur Waugh
The second number of The Yellow Book is to be out next Monday, and it is reported that it will be great improvement upon the first. For one thing, it is to be 100 pages larger.
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From The Daily Chronicle: “The New ‘Yellow Book'”
Unattributed
The second Yellow Book is better than the first. That is saying much or little, according to what one thought of the first. The fact is therefore better stated absolutely than relatively. So we may pronounce the second volume of this “illustrates quarterly” a publication of far more than usual interest.
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From The Dial: “Second number of ‘The Yellow Book'”
Unattributed
The bits of genre which largely serve for fiction in “The Yellow Book” (Copeland & Day) are not, as a rule, very attractive or stimulating. They are often amateurish in their impressionism, and have too marked a flavor of preciosity.
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From The Literary Digest: “‘The Yellow Book’ on Modern Literature”
Unattributed
The most advanced writers of England established a few months ago a periodical of their own, The Yellow Book, an illustrated quarterly, which was to be the mouthpiece of modern literature. The sensation created in the first number was enormous. The second, just issued, bids fair to create no less stir by its radicalism and its outspoken defiance of the old novelists.
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From The National Observer: “Dulness in Yellow”
Unattributed
If The Yellow Book holds to its present path it will soon be amongst the most respectable and the most insignificant of our magazines. The second number bids almost impudently for the suffrage of the suburbs. Mr. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, L.L.D., has been engaged to explain away the alarums and excursions of the first, and right morally he has fulfilled his task.
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From The Saturday Review: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
The new Yellow Book (Mathews & Lane) is as undistinguished as the first issue, or, if distinguished in any way, is distinguished precisely as the first volume is distinguished. Mr. Henry James in “‘The Coxon Fund” is much more diffuse and much less amusing than in his former contribution.
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From The Spectator: “The Yellow Book”
Unattributed
THE new Yellow Book is a ponderous affair. There is more “Literature” than in the first volume, and double the amount of “Art.” Mr. William Watson contributes a short four-line epigram.
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From Times: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
The second volume of the YELLOW BOOK (Matthews and Lane) will not have the same succès du scandal that fell to the first, but it will be better liked by the people who still think that in literature and art it is well to draw the line somewhere.
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The Yellow Book, Volume 3
From New York Times: “Another Yellow Nuisance”
Unattributed
One William Hogarth over a hundred years ago gave us the full face, the side one too, patches and all, of the fallen woman of his time, and as far as outline goes Mr. Aubrey Beardsley is only a poor copyist. If there be talent in an artist because he possesses the power of irritating one’s eyes, so merit may be accorded to certain files for the reason they can produce blisters.
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From Pall Mall Gazette: “The Brazen Yellowanthus”
Unattributed
THERE was once a very small boy who said to a man grown old in his sins, “I’m awfully fond of swearing I know a frightful oath”: and straightway he climbed that middle-aged sinner’s knee and whispered him a blood-thirsty, hair-raising anathema. It seems to us as if all, or nearly all, the contributors to the Yellow Book know something in the swearing line that—if we may chance the vulgarism—can give your mere Ernulphus fits.
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From Studio: “New Publications”
Unattributed
The Yellow Book. Volume III. (London: John Lane. Price 5s. net.)— The art of The Yellow Book is the art of Aubrey Beardsley. The Yellow Book without Aubrey Beardsley would lose its chief individuality. It is evident that The Yellow Book pins its faith to Aubrey Beardsley, and is ready to stand or fall by him.
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From The Bookman: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
Its promise to provide permanent literature the ‘Yellow Book”’fulfils in its third volume by Mr. William Watson’s charming love-song, and Mr. John Davidson’s “Ballad of a Nun.” The fiction is rather less good than in the earlier numbers, though in Mr. Ernest Dowson’s “Apple Blossom in Brittany,” and in the editor’s “When I am King,” there is excellent workmanship.
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From The Critic: “A Yellow Bore”
Unattributed
ONE IS BEGINNING to dread the coming around of the quarters of the year. Not because they mark the flight of time, but because they announce the coming of The Yellow Book.
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From The National Observer: “A Xanthopiate”
Unattributed
Even the best of men, when he knows a good story, likes to tell it. And the writer of this review knows a good story. But he is not going to tell it. His present duty is to criticize the Yellow Book and he means to live up to the dignity—or impudence—of the occasion. Not that this is as easily done as you might think.
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From The Saturday Review: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
With the lapse of time The Yellow Book has not acquired tone, which is the gift of time. The amateurishness of the present number is more pronounced than ever. The note is struck in the extremely flimsy article, “Women— Wives or Mothers,” with which the hook opens.
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From The Spectator: “The Yellow Book”
Unattributed
THE third volume of The Yellow Book is the first that has been issued by Mr. John Lane at his new sign of ‘The Bodley Head.”When a publication of this kind reaches its third number and can no longer be looked on as a novelty or a “sport” of the literary genus, it is time to ask seriously what place it takes among contemporary literature, and of what value it has as an exponent of art.
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The Yellow Book, Volume 3 and 4
From The Dial: “One Year of the ‘The Yellow Bookʼ”
Unattributed
“The Yellow Book” always contains such a variety of things that it would go hard were there not a few of considerable merit among them all. Indeed, one can hardly look over the contents of one of these staring octavos, without a dim sense of wonder that the editors should have unearthed so many acceptable writers and artists hitherto unknown to the public, for familiar names are by no means the rule.
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The Yellow Book, Volume 4
From Current Literature: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
The fourth volume of the Yellow Book is out, and doubtless, says the New York Tribune, there is joy in the hearts of its makers and readers because this precious bantling has weathered its first year.
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From The Graphic: “The Yellow Book”
Unattributed
The bright lights of The Yellow Book show no signs at present of failing. Some of the soberer spirits who lent it dignity in former issues are now absent, but the particular stars whose genius it was called into existence to exploit are still here to support it towards its first year of life.
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From The New York Times: “That Yellow Nuisance Again”
Unattributed
The character of the Yellow Book may be generalized as not nice, but nasty. There is the leading story, the first one, “The Bohemian Girl,” but she is not as Bunn and Balfe constructed her. Mr. Henry Harland makes an emancipated young person, who is a mademoiselle, and mademoiselle is the mother or the little Camille, and presumably the papa was a Brazilian.
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From The Bookman: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
There is greater average merit in the latest number of the Yellow Book than in the former ones, but there is no one feature that stands out prominently, unless it be the fearsome picture of Mr. George Moore, which is calculated to justify all the obstinate prejudices of librarians.
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From The Critic: “A Yellow Indecency”
Unattributed
THE EDITORS OF The Yellow Book attracted attention to that quarterly at first by the novelty of its make-up, if not by the originality of their ideas. People laughed at the thing, but they bought it and they found some things between its covers that were worth reading.
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From The Literary World: “London Letter”
Unattributed
In the latest issue of the Yellow Book Mr. John Lane gives a drawing by a young man of genius, Mr. Patten Wilson. This is the first of his work to see the light.
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The Yellow Book, Volume 5
From Chicago Daily Tribune: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
Kenneth Grahame is one of those delicate humorists, with Mr. Le Gallienne at their head, who cultivate a precocity in style. But Mr. Grahame has manliness united with his delicacy, and he writes charmingly of children, which is his favorite subject.
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From Chicago Daily Tribune: “With the Novelists”
Unattributed
GROUP OF VARIED AND INTERESTING STORIES OF THE WEEK In the fifth volume of the Yellow Book, which is now out, there is in “The Pleasure Pilgrim” an outlining of an Englishwoman’s notions of what an American girl really is. The author’s name is Ella D’Arcy.
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From The Bookman: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
Certain occurrences in London of recent date, which it is not necessary to mention more specifically, have had a very marked influence upon the tone of the present number of the Yellow Book. It is not only free from any suspicion of moral slime, but, in its literary features at least, appears to have abandoned its former eccentricity.
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From The Bookman: Review of The Yellow Book, Vol. 5, and The Evergreen, Vol. 1
Unattributed
It is impossible to keep from grouping these two “seasonals” together, and yet green is not nearly so unlike yellow as these northern and southern cousins are unlike each other. The ‘Yellow Book’ was never so yellow as its reputation how its particular reputation rose is difficult to see perhaps from rumours of unfulfilled intentions.
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From The Dial: “The Fifth Issue of ‘The Yellow Bookʼ”
Unattributed
“The Yellow Book” has been made the victim of a good deal of abuse on account of its decadent tendencies in both literature and art, the abuse, although extravagant, not being entirely unwarranted.
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From The New York Times: “The Fifth Yellow Book”
Unattributed
There is really little of Mr. Aubrey Beardsley in this volume. Possibly the outside cover is his, and a young woman who reclines on a striped lounge.
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From The Westminster Gazette: “The May Magazines”
Unattributed
The new number of the Yellow Book (John Lane) is notable for a fine poem by Mr. William Watson. It is called a “Hymn to the Sea,” and is a very successful essay in the elegiac metre.
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The Yellow Book, Volume 6
From The National Observer: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
The Yellow Book continues to sober down. It is impossible to take objection to any of the contributions on the point of colour. A dull gray is the prevailing tone. Mr. Henry James has the first place with a subtly written story called ‘The Next Time.’ There is not much story in it, but so skillfully is it written that you do not feel the want of it until you have finished and set yourself to remember what it was all about.
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From The Speaker: “Literature, ETC.”
Unattributed
The short story which is the triumph of modern literary art sometimes realizes the “purgation ofpity and fear,” in the sense which Aristotle, according to the best modern commentators, did not adopt. It “excites pity and fear in the minds of the spectators,” but not in such an effectual way as to still those passions and purge them out.
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The Yellow Book, Volume 7
From The National Observer: “The Yellow Book”
Unattributed
The Yellow Book has sadly fallen from that estate in which it was created. We said so of the volume which preceded this, and we are not going to harp on the matter. Mr. Le Gallienne opens with something that seems midway between a personal recollection and a fantasy on sausages and Tintara.
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From Illustrated London News: “The Yellow Quarterly”
Unattributed
The Yellow Book. Volume V11. (John Lane.)-A change has come over the spirit of Mr. Lane’s periodical. Mr. Aubrey Beardsley is exorcised, and the Newlyn school reigns in his stead.
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From Saturday Review: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
Some people dislike journalistic condemnation of themselves of their works, other are indifferent to it, and yet others enjoy it. We belong to that last class.
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From Sketch: “The Latest ‘Yellow Bookʼ”
Unattributed
For some reason or other the Yellow Book has always been treated from the first with a certain parti pris somewhat lacking in fairness.
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From The Bookman: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
The latest Yellow Book, just issued by Messrs. Copeland and Day, lays more serious claim than any of its previous numbers, perhaps, to our studious at- tention.
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From The Critic: “The Lounger”
Unattributed
The Yellow Book is shorn of its yellowness: it is nothing now but book. Some of the old writers are to be found in its seventh number, but they are not their old selves, except Miss Ella D’Arcy, but then, she never was yellow.
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From The Dial: “Briefer Mention”
Unattributed
There are good names, such as those of Dr. Garnett and Mr. Kenneth Grahame—names that give promise of entertainment, such as those of Mr. Henry Harland, Mr. A. C. Benson, and Miss Ella d’Arcy.
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The Yellow Book, Volume 8
From The Athenæum: “Our Library Table”
Unattributed
Rosalind: the Story of Three Parrots, by E. M. Harris (Redway), is of the company of books that are often said, by the lover of sensational writing, to have “nothing in them.”
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From The Critic: “The Chicago Letter”
Unattributed
THE EXHIBITION which was opened last week at the Art Insti- tute is much the most interesting that has been held here since the Fair. It contains 116 paintings by the Glasgow men, 36 by Danish artists, and a few by Dagnan-Bouveret, Degas, Thanlow and Whistler.
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From The Critic: “The London Letter”
Unattributed
NOW IS the hour of the lecturer. With the lengthening of the evenings, local Athenaums take on a studious habit, and promi- nent men-of-letters are invited down into the provinces to dis- course sagaciously upon topics kindred to their profession.
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From The National Observer: “The Yellow Book”
Unattributed
This interesting quarterly has not yet ceased to transform itself with each issue into something new and strange.
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The Yellow Book, Volume 9
From The New York Times: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
The popularity of the Yellow Book has declined of late, and Copeland and Day intend, it is said, to discontinue it, all of which seems to show that the critics cannot make a work popular by abusing it.
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From The New York Times: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
The popularity of the Yellow Book has declined of late, and Copeland and Day intend, it is said, to discontinue it, all of which seems to show that the critics cannot make a work popular by abusing it.
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The Yellow Book, Volume 10
From National Observer: “Yellow and Green”
Unattributed
But for a rather dull and sordid tale of improbable intrigue by K. Douglas King, a story by Oswald Sickert that savours of apprenticeship, and a note in singularly poor taste by ‘The Yellow Dwarf,”the ‘literature”of this quarter’s number of The Yellow Book attains a high level of excellence.
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From Pall Mall Magazine: Review of The Yellow Book
I. Zangwill
The Yellow Book (Vol. X.) seems much better worth its price than most books of other colours.
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From The New York Times: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
Some one having said the “Yellow Book” was dead, it is proper to remark that it is alive, and as yellow as it ever was.
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The Yellow Book, Volume 11
From The Atlantic Monthly: “Comment on New Books”
Unattributed
A periodical is generally founded for one of two purposes, – the making of money or the expression of ideas. After it is well on its feel, it may accomplish both of these ends.
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From The Literary World: “The Yellow Book”
Unattributed
Here it is, a whole volume of it, Volume XI for October 1896, an illustrated amall quarto of 342 pages, taking its sensational name from its flaming yellow cover, and gathering twenty-two chapters on literature and twelve chapters on art from a variety of writers of the new impressionist school.
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From The Dial: “Literary Notes”
Unattributed
“The Yellow Book” for October has just made its appearance in this country, coming from the recently established New York branch of Mr. John Lane’s business.
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From The National Observer: “Autumnal Tints”
Unattributed
Mr. Max Beerbohms romantic satire of “The Happy Hypocrite,” his portrait of “The Yellow Dwarf,” and Miss Syrett’s Front Cover Design should have been distributed at intervals over the last issue of The Yellow Book. The humour of them, coming as they do at the beginning, is not sufficient to support the reader through the solid remainder of this bulky tome. Mr. Beerbohm comes before us masked for a fete champetre.
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From The Westminster Gazette: “The Yellow Book”
Unattributed
It is not too late, we hope to notice the last Yellow Book, though it has been for some weeks before the public. A rumour had been current that Mr. Lane proposed to abandon the illustrations, but this proves unfounded. One would not wish to lose them, for they have sometimes been so much worse, and occasionally so much better, than those of other magazines that they have helped to give the publication a character of its own, a character that without them it would perhaps lose altogether.
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The Yellow Book, Volume 12
From The Graphic: “The Yellow Book”
Unattributed
The Yellow Book is beginning to be interesting as a survival. It is not so long since every one used ot look forward to its quarterly publication with a sort of smiling expectancy, which was variously attributable either to a desire to see what new antics its contributors had been playing or to a belief that behind all the Yellow Book’s eccentricities, and even behind its enormities, there lurked a good deal of cleverness and a good deal of effort to be original.
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From The Academy: “From Crowded Shelves”
Unattributed
This fantastic quarterly does not grow in strength or beauty. It lacks a policy, a central idea, and has become merely an agglomeration of pictures and stories, all of which might appear with equal propriety elsewhere – whereas once – once things were not so – once The Yellow Book was a fighter in a definite, meritorious cause, and contributors were proud to believe that their work was unlikely to be accepted by Mr. Harland’s fellow editors.
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From The Dial: “Literary Notes”
Unattributed
“The Yellow Book” for January opens with a poem by Mr. William Watson…
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From The Literary World: “The Yellow Book”
Unattributed
The Yellow Book contains an unusual number of good articles, and is much less full of mannerisms than its predecessors.
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From The National Observer: “The Yellow Book”
Unattributed
If The Yellow Book is not above its own high average of at least the last few numbers there is little blame. Mr. Henry Harland’s “Flower o the Clove”is in his brightest and most captivating manner. perhaps, however, he a little shirks his conclusion but it is something in The Yellow Book to have a conclusion at all.
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From The New York Times: “Not as Yellow as it was”
Unattributed
Once more the egg-colored volume called “The Yellow Book” appears, and it is improved. If the cover embellishment is Miss Ethel Reed’s, (which it probably is,) it is a nice one. As to the prints, there are some few good ones and many shockingly poor ones.
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From The Times: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
The principal upon which the YELLOW BOOK (John Lane) is edited would seem to be that at intervals of every three months a section of the reading public is seized with a craving for fresh work by Mr. Henry Harland, Miss Ella D’Arcy, and other of the little school of writers whom the Bodley Head has brought into notice.
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From The Magazine of Art: Review of The Yellow Book
Margaret Armour
The patient public is always having something offered it to live up to. Yesterday it was the blue tea-pot; to-day it is The Yellow Book and The Savoy. The majority, of course, plod on their stolid way, unconcerned with the baubles of art, but there are always some for whom its esoteric mysteries have a charm, and who would rather die than lag in an up-to-date movement.
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The Yellow Book, Volume 13
From The Academy: “From Crowded Shelves”
Unattributed
THE contents of the new number of the Yellow Book are more diversified than distinguished. Mr. Sidney Benson Thorpe’s story, “An Immortal,” is sad and squalid enough, but very well done – Miss Evelyn Sharp’s variant of Mr. Aldrich’s Marjorie Daw is clever, although lacking in lightness – Mr. Harland has another bright comedy in porcelain, as his very unreal studies in raillery might be called – and Mrs. Cunningham Grahame’s treatment of an old legend is interesting.
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From The Literary World: “The Yellow Book”
Unattributed
The April Yellow Book has for its cover a startling design of a conventionalized cock-fight by Mabel Syrett. The illustrations, by Ethel Read, and the book-plates, by Patten Wilson, are particularly interesting.
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From The New York Times: “Bad Art in the Yellow Book”
Unattributed
“Most anything will do,” may be the answer the editor of The Yellow Book gives to the artist who furnishes illustrations for this publication. Outside the volume as a challenge on the yellow cover are two fighting cocks, with all kinds of undulating tail feathers, but with very poorly developed spurs.
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From The Publisher’s Circular: Review of The Yellow Book
Unattributed
Among the literary contributors to this quarter’s ‘Yellow Book”’are Dr. Garnett, Mrs. Cunningham Grahame, Marion Hepworth Dixon, F. B. Money Coutts, Ella D’Arcy, RIchard Le Gallienne, Olive Custance, Stephen Phillips, and Francis Watt.
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