Charting the period that extends from the 1860s to the 1940s, this volume offers fresh perspectives on Aestheticism and Modernism. By acknowledging that both movements had a passion for the new, it goes beyond the alleged divide between Modernism and its predecessors. Rather than reading the modernist credo, Make it New , as a desire to break away from the past, the authors of this book suggest reading it as a continuation and a reappropriation of the spirit of the New that characterizes Aestheticism. Basing their arguments on recent reassessments of Aestheticism and Modernism and their...