No other writer of the fin-de-siEcle period undertook a more elaborate exploration of perversities and abnormalities than Jean Lorrain, and no one else went as far afield in the search for discoveries of that curious kind than he did. Perhaps, given the variety of human behavior, it was not possible for him actually to invent perversities that no one actually practiced, or were even tempted to practice, but what is certain is that no one ever examined the anatomy of eroticism, including its wilder extremes, with a greater analytical fervor.

In this, the second collection of...

None of Jean Lorrain's biographers has contrived to discover exactly when or why he began taking ether, or how much of it he took before realising (too late) that it was an extremely bad idea. The drug certainly helped provide the feverish, nightmarish atmosphere of these wonderfully decadent and sophisticated tales, and many of the apparitions with which they are populated.

Brian Stableford's superb translations represent the first appearance in English of Jean Lorrain's ether-inspired 'nightmares', originally collected as Sensations et Souvenirs in 1895. The later tales...

Jean Lorrain, one of the leading figures of the Decadent Movement, was a master of the conte cruel. Presented here, for the first time in English, are ten such tales: stories of princes and princesses; mock-fairytales that seem to pervert the innocence of their settings with a triumphant immorality, plunging the reader into an atmosphere of voluptuousness and sensuality.

-Whoever has not believed as a child, - wrote the author, -will not dream as a young man; it is necessary to think, on the threshold of life, of weaving beautiful tapestries of dreams in order to decorate our abode...