Dial: The First Number of the Series

The Dial was a short-lived but legendary art magazine that appeared in five issues between 1889 and 1897, published from The Vale, the legendary shared house in Chelsea where Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon created some of the most beautiful books of the Aesthetic movement. This first number features contributions from the editors themselves, along with R. Savage and the poet John Gray, whose name would become inextricable from Oscar Wilde's most famous creation. The magazine embodied the late-Victorian fascination with art for art's sake, housing poetry, essays, and illustrations that prioritized beauty over didacticism. For collectors and scholars of Victorian literature, this represents a tangible artifact from the edge of the Decadent movement, a window into the circles that produced The Yellow Book and shaped Wilde's world. It endures as a testament to a brief moment when English letters dared to prioritize the exquisite over the instructive.