A library book that was more than 50 years overdue has finally been returned to the Massachusetts library where it belongs – with a kind note.
The Early Work of Aubrey Beardsley, an art book published in 1899, was borrowed from the Worcester Public Library in 1973 and was meant to be returned by May 22 that year.
But it took another five decades before the book was found by a Good Samaritan somewhere in Boston and brought to another library in nearby Cambridge.
“Thank you to Cambridge Public Library and the Boston resident who found this book and made sure The Early Work of Aubrey Beardsley was returned to its rightful place in our collection after 51 years,” said the Worcester Public Library in a Facebook post earlier this month.
It said that the book had first been added to its collection in July 1899, shortly after its original publication.
Kathy Penny, the collections manager for Cambridge Public Library, also left a note inside the book for Worcester Library’s resident history and genealogy librarian Alex London, saying: “Hi Alex! Returning to its rightful home, 51 years later. Thx!”
“It’s a rarity that someone found this,” London told The Worcester Telegram & Gazette. “But not only that they found it, but that it is in such good condition.”
Aubrey Beardsley was an English illustrator and author who lived in the 19th century, known for his black ink drawings influenced by Japanese woodblock printing.
He was, according to the UK’s Tate art gallery, “a leading figure in the aesthetic movement” alongside Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler, specialising in “the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic”.
His black ink drawings were influenced by Japanese woodcuts, and depicted the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler.
As late as 1966, a British private museum that exhibited his prints was raided by police and charged under the country’s obscenity laws.
Despite once declaring “if I am not grotesque, I am nothing,” Beardsley later converted to Catholicism and, on his deathbed, asked his publisher to destroy some of his “obscene” art. The publisher refused, and Beardsley died of tuberculosis about a week later.
