A collection of Downson's letters that provide a wealth of biographical information and add enough to a knowledge of the literary history of his time (late 19th-century England) to bring to the reader this outstanding volume.

This edition includes all of Dowson's known poems. It describes in detail the contents of his manuscript notebook and re-transcribes the poems from it; it includes his two published volumes, Verses (1896) and Decorations (1899), his verse play The Pierrot of the Minute, the discrete independent parts of his verse translation of Voltaire, and a few uncollected pieces. All have been checked where possible against the original manuscripts and annotated to provide explanation and context.

This edition includes all of Dowson's known poems. It describes in detail the contents of his manuscript notebook and re-transcribes the poems from it; it includes his two published volumes, Verses (1896) and Decorations (1899), his verse play The Pierrot of the Minute, the discrete independent parts of his verse translation of Voltaire, and a few uncollected pieces. All have been checked where possible against the original manuscripts and annotated to provide explanation and context.

Ernest Christopher Dowson (1867-1900) is best known as a the author of a number of exquisite lyrics which epitomise the mood and style of the English 1890s - verses like 'cynara' and 'They are not long'. Yet Arthur Symons was only repeating what Dowson often himself asserted when he said that 'Dowson was the only poet I ever knew who cared more for his prose than his verse'. Monica Borg's Introduction suggests for the first time what lay behind Dowson's opinion of the importance of his prose, seeing withing it a programme of aesthetic and cultural radicalism. She places him firmly in relation to the late-nineteenth-century crisis of values, self and representation which Dowson both expressed and sought to precipitate, and she indicates that it is in his stories rather than his verse that Dowson shows how deeply implicated he was in the politics of resistance and cultural change that characterized the decadent literary and artistic movement. This edition provides texts of all of Dowson's short stories, thoroughly corrected from the original editions and with detailed notes on their genesis and development.

Few of the many romantic figures of the nineties have weathered the changing schools of literary taste as well as Ernest Dowson, in whose verse there is found a timeless, ingratiating charm and enduring interest. This biography is only incidentally a critical appraisal of Dowson's achievements but attempts to give a more completely rounded picture of the man than we have had before it. The book is based on a great deal of new material, which clears up many misinterpretations of Dowson's personality. This consists of unpublished letters from various sources, including twelve from Oscar Wilde that have not been printed before and detailed information gleaned by the author in interviews and in correspondence with persons who knew the poet intimately. To modern readers versed in psychological explanations of behavior, Dowson's story unwinds in a foredoomed pattern: the talented child of neurotic parents, the maladjusted boy at Oxford, the discontented young man in London, his curious infatuation for the child Adelaide, the brief association with prominent literary leaders in the Rhymers' Club and on the short-lived Savoy, and then his mother's suicide, his homelessness, poverty, aimless wandering abroad, the escape in drinking, finally death. Yet with it all, the insatiable urge to weave out his dreams in facile words which now form a unique and permanent contribution to English poetry. From this book Dowson emerges as a tragically interesting figure. The biography gives as much of his story as probably will ever be known, and as such takes an important place among the lives of English poets.

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Ernest Dowson (1867-1900) was a British writer of the fin de siècle period, widely seen as the most representative example of the 'tragic generation' of decadent poets. This book presents a full-length and coherent reading of Dowson's oeuvre for the first time in English.

Featuring innovative research by emergent and established scholars, The Fin-de-Siecle Poem throws new light on the remarkable diversity of poetry produced at the close of the nineteenth century in England. Opening with a detailed preface that shows why literary historians have frequently underrated fin-de-siecle poetry, the collection explains how a strikingly rich body of lyrical and narrative poems anticipated many of the developments traditionally attributed to Modernism. Each chapter in turn provides insights into the ways in which late-nineteenth-century poets represented their experiences of the city, their attitudes toward sexuality, their responses to empire, and their interest in religious belief. The eleven essays presented by editor Joseph Bristow pay renewed attention to the achievements of such legendary writers as Oscar Wilde, John Davidson, Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson, and W.B. Yeats, whose careers have always been associated with the 1890s. This book also explores the lesser-known but equally significant advances made by notable women poets, including Michael Field, Amy Levy, Charlotte Mew, Alice Meynell, A. Mary F. Robinson, and Graham R. Tomson. The Fin-de-Siecle Poem brings together innovative research on poetry that has been typecast as the attenuated Victorianism that was rejected by Modernism. The contributors underscore the remarkable innovations made in English poetry of the 1880s and 1890s and show how woman poets stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their better-known male contemporaries.Joseph Bristow is professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he edits the journal Nineteenth-Century Literature. His recent books include The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry, Oscar Wilde: Contextual Conditions, and the variorum edition of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The Aesthetic and Decadent Movement of the late 19th century spawned the idea of "Art for Art's Sake," challenged aesthetic standards and shocked the bourgeosie. From Walter Pater's study, "The Renaissance to Salome, the truly decadent collaboration between Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley, Karl Beckson has chosen a full spectrum of works that chronicle the British artistic achievement of the 1890s. In this revised edition of a classic anthology, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" has been included in its entirety; the bibliography has been completely updated; Professor Beckson's notes and commentary have been expanded from the first edition published in 1966. The so-called Decadent or Aesthetic period remains one of the most interesting in the history of the arts. The poetry and prose of such writers as Yeats, Wilde, Symons, Johnson, Dowson, Barlas, Pater and others are included in this collection, along with sixteen of Aubrey Beardsley's drawings.

Writings that shed new light on one of the most gifted, if reclusive, poets of the fin-de-siècle. A lost poet of the decadent era, Lionel Johnson is the shadow man of the 1890s, an enigma “pale as wasted golden hair.” History has all but forgotten Johnson, except as a footnote to the lives of more celebrated characters like W. B. Yeats and Oscar Wilde. Johnson should have been one of the great poets of the age but was already drinking eau-de-cologne for kicks while a teenager at Winchester College. His attraction to absinthe damaged his fragile health and cast him forever into a waking dream of haunted rooms and spectral poetry. A habitual insomniac, he haunted medieval burial grounds after dark, jotting down the epitaphs of the gone-too-young, as if anticipating his own early demise at the age of 35—falling from a bar stool in a Fleet Street pub. It was rumored that Johnson performed “strange religious rites” in his rooms at Oxford and experimented with hashish in the company of fellow poet Ernest Dowson. Moving to London, he fell in with Simeon Solomon, Oscar Wilde, and Aubrey Beardsley, and would contribute to the leading decadent publications of the day, including The Chameleon, The Yellow Book, and The Savoy. Like a glimmering of a votive candle in one of Johnson's dream churches, Incurable sheds new light on one of the most gifted, if reclusive, poets of the fin-de-siècle. Containing a detailed biography, illustrations, rare and unusual material including previously unseen letters, poetry, and essays, Incurable pays tribute to this enchanting and eccentric poet while providing fresh insight into an era that continues to fascinate.