Bluebirds by Catulle MendEs (1841-1909), here delightfully translated for the first time into English by Brian Stableford, is fascinating, not only because it illustrates a particular evolution within the pattern of the author's own works, but because that pattern reflects a more general one associated with the evolution from the French Romanticism of the first half of the nineteenth century to the Decadent and Symbolist Movements of the fin-de-siEcle. MendEs was one of the key figures in the latter phases of that process of development, launching his literary career in the 1860s under the...