2-880-241 - Shirley Markham Collection/Heritage Images

The Dream, 1895. An androgynous figure with a wand gestures to an unseen person behind the bedcurtains. 'Belinda still her downy pillow pressed; Her guardian sylph prolonged the balmy rest; 'Twas he had summoned to her silent bed; The morning dream that hovered o'er her head'. 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]