Sir Kenneth Clark once said that Aubrey Beardsley's drawings "positively suggested vice as a more interesting alternative." The idea is perfectly embodied in The Story of Venus and Tannhäuser, a short novel that combines Beardsley's fascination with abandoning oneself to sexual pleasure and his love of the artificial and the exotic. A retelling of an old legend, the novel, left unfinished at Beardsley's death and completed by poet John Glassco in 1959, offers a witty and ingeniously decadent account of Tannhäuser's visit to the glamorous pleasure palace of Venus. The unfinished work was first published in 1904 as Under the Hill, a title also used for the 1959 completed version. Aubrey Beardsley was born in 1872 in Brighton, England. He began drawing as a child and in 1891 he illustrated his first book, an edition of Morte d'Arthur. In 1894 he became the art director of the literary journal The Yellow Book. He went on to illustrate Oscar Wilde's Salome, as well as other works including The Rape of the Lock and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. He began publishing installments of The Story of Venus and Tannhäuser in the magazine The Savoy in 1896. He died in 1898 at the age of 25.