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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.
Patten Wilson was born on March 23, 1869, the son of a clergyman who ran a private school at Cleobury Mortimer in Shropshire. His talent as an artist seems to have come to him by inheritance from his father, “a schoolmaster, very facile with his pencil, deft in the use of tools” (Williamson 19). His brother was the architect and designer Henry Wilson (1864-1934), who taught metalwork at the Royal College of Art and at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London and had an extensive business as a sculptor and metalworker. Henry was also Master of the Art Workers Guild in 1917 and president of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, 1915-22. Patten Wilson’s other brother Edgar was a successful shipping manager.
At about the age of 19, Patten Wilson went to Kidderminster School of Art, but he found the training there unsatisfactory, so he returned home after a few months to pursue a course of self-education, in particular copying the work of Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). In addition to this study, which taught him steadiness of hand and economy in the use of lines (Sparrow 189), he made a great many studies of animals and plants. These he treated as a designer, with a view to translating them into patterns that might be used for textiles and wallpapers. Despite his stylized approach, he was inspired by the natural world; “Amongst his favourite haunts [were] the gardens of the Zoological Society and the horse shows of the country” (Williamson 19). His early designs were spirited and full of invention (Sparrow 190), and his decision to enter the field of the decorative arts showed that he was, perhaps through his brother, engaged with the “new art” movement.
Patten Wilson had a restless nature and took a number of jobs, including that of
secretary to the managing director of the Liverpool gymnasium; he even considered
becoming a teacher of gymnastics. In his spare time he continued his artistic studies
and his earliest published drawings appeared in
His other decorative efforts included working in enamel and painting church frescos
at Hanworth in Norfolk and at Llanfairfechan in Wales (Williamson 18). After a
further year at this work, he again became restless and set himself up as a freelance
designer while continuing his athletic pursuits through polo and other sports. Walter
Sparrow commented in
In 1894 Wilson was introduced by Richard le Gallienne
(1866-1947) to the publisher John Lane (1854-1925), who gave
the young artist a commission to design and illustrate
In 1898 Wilson got an excellent opportunity to show his talent as a book artist when
he was commissioned by Longmans to provide illustrations for a volume of Coleridge’s
poetry. He also illustrated
In April 1900, Wilson married Alice Harding at the fashionable London church of St George’s, Hannover Square. They lived in various parts of London, including Battersea, Camberwell, Wandsworth, and Fulham. The couple had two children, Aldred (1903-1974) and Joan (1911-1973). He was later divorced and married his second wife Ethel Florence Facey in Lewisham in 1921. After his initial success working for John Lane, he found his commissions as an illustrator or designer sporadic and insufficient to sustain himself and his family, eventually depending on contributions from his more successful brothers to survive (Manton 181). He died in Chelsea, London on January 22, 1934 and was buried in Cleobury Mortimer, Shropshire.
© 2012, Geoffrey Beare
Geoffrey Beare is a freelance writer and researcher in the history of book
illustration. He is chairman of the Imaginative Book Illustration Society and a
trustee of the William Heath Robinson Trust. He is author of