Leonard Smithers has been called the Publisher to the Decadents. He is considered to have played a critical role in the aesthetic movement of fin-de-siecle London, assisting the careers of Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, Arthur Symons, Max Beerbohm among many others.
In 1897 Bernard Quartich called him the cleverest publisher in London. His taste for beautifully bound books and his tastes in design and typography led to his being called "the most extraordinary publisher ... of the nineties" and was considered to be as much a part of the movement as the writers.
He was also considered to be quite audacious, publishing works that no one else would touch, such as Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol. "There is little doubt that without Smithers the avant-garde movement of the 1890s might have been snuffed out" (7).
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Beardsley, Aubrey Vincent.
A Book of Fifty Drawings.
Leonard Smithers, 1897.
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White-Rodyng, John.
The Night.
Leonard Smithers, 1900.