In a stunning fictional tour de force, based on five years of research, Donald S. Olson portrays Aubrey Beardsley's life from infancy to his death at the early age of twenty-five, a victim of tuberculosis. Written in the first person, in the form of confessional letters to a French priest, Père Coubé, The Confessions of Aubrey Beardsley weaves fictional incidents into the biographical facts of Beardsley's life to present a powerful portrait of a modern artist who challenged the hypocrisies of Victorian England — and was made to suffer for it.