Under the Hill - Tapa dura

Beardsley's novel Under the Hill was too hot for its time and unfinished at his death. Originally offered to John Lane, the early chapters were first published in serial form by Leonard Smithers in early numbers of The Savoy . With Smither's bankruptcy, Lane acquired all the surviving material for the book, including most of the pictures, and in 1904 issued a heavily expurgated, though illustrated, version of the manuscript in a handsome quarto volume as Under the Hill . In 1907, Smithers pirated a version, however, under Beardsley's original title, The Story of Venus and Tannhäuser , without illustrations limited to 300 copies "for the use of literary students who are also admirers of Beardsley's wayward genius". Its chief merit lies in the fact that it makes available a much fuller text than had Lane, though still expurgated. The novel was completed by John Glassco and published by Olympia Press in an unexpurgated version in 1959 in a limited edition of 3,000 numbered copies, bound in green silk on BePegarde watermarked paper. Reissued the same year as part of the Traveler's Companion Series in green wraps, under the title Under the Hill .