An Evil Motherhood by Walt Ruding / Aubrey Beardsley first edition 1896

London: Elkin Mathews, 1896
 
8vo., blue cloth lettered in gilt to spine and upper board; with cobweb design to upper; pp. [ix], x, [iii], 4-99, [iii], [3-20, ads]; with a frontispiece by Aubrey Beardsley; outer and lower edge untrimmed; spine a little faded; light spotting to outer edges and final paste-down; else a very good example, with newspaper clipping tipped-in to the ffep. 
 
First edition, second issue, as usual, one of 1000 copies. A handful of review copies were published with an alternative ‘Black Coffee’ frontispiece by Beardsley, but these were quickly recalled after a complaint from John Lane, who objected to his former partner (Mathews) using the same image as one which had been produced for him, and intended for use in the fifth installment of The Yellow Book. A third, remainder issue was later published with both illustrations featured. 
 
An unusual tale about a man declared insane by his mother, written in a style which was to pave the way for the stream-of-consciousness writing which was to become popular in early to mid-twentieth century fiction. Little is known about the author,  An Evil Motherhood was his only published work.