Arthur Symons (1865-1945) was a central figure in the decadent phase of English poetry of the 1890s.  His early verse, notably in the major collections Silhouettes (1892; revd 1896) and London Nights (1895; revd 1897), created a sophisticated new kind of urban poetry out of the gas-lit world of London theatre and night-life. Under the French influences of Baudelaire and Verlaine, Symons developed a wistful poetic eroticism new to English readers, leading the way to the modernism of T. S. Eliot and others in the next generation.

This selection from...

Arthur Symons (1865-1945) was a central figure in the decadent phase of English poetry of the 1890s.  His early verse, notably in the major collections Silhouettes (1892; revd 1896) and London Nights (1895; revd 1897), created a sophisticated new kind of urban poetry out of the gas-lit world of London theatre and night-life. Under the French influences of Baudelaire and Verlaine, Symons developed a wistful poetic eroticism new to English readers, leading the way to the modernism of T. S. Eliot and others in the next generation.

This selection from...

Walter Pater is best known for his Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) and for his first novel Marius the Epicurean (1885). His short fiction deserves a much wider audience. This edition includes the four intricate and influential narratives he published as Imaginary Portraits in 1887 together with five of his other portraits, published only in periodical form. Fully annotated and supplemented by valuable contextual materials, this collection, the first critical edition of Pater's shorter fiction, makes accessible these extraordinary and impressive stories....