This book analyses Beardsley's most characteristic works, clarifying why his art is indispensable to understanding fin-de-siècle Victorian culture. Beardsley's various grotesque figures serve as emblems of `monstrous' metaphysical contortion, even as his elegant designs simultaneously recuperate such dislocations formalistically. Alternating between an urge to outrage and a craving for authority, Beardsley's elegant designs and `dandy' sensibility effect what might be called a `caricature' of traditional canonical meaning.