2-880-168 - Shirley Markham Collection/Heritage Images

The Billet-Doux, 1895-1896. A young woman in a bonnet and negligee reads a love letter, propped against an enormous pillow. 'Twas then, Belinda, if report say true; Thy eyes first opened on a billet-doux'. Illustration for "The Rape of the Lock" by Alexander Pope, published privately by Leonard Smithers in 1896. Rape in this context refers not to sexual violence but to the theft and carrying away of a lock of hair, from the Latin rapere: to snatch, to grab, to carry off. From "The Best of Beardsley" edited by R. A. Walker, [The Bodley Head, London, 1948]