Author Description

A unique addition to the popular Oxford Authors series, this anthology of works written between 1870 and 1905 bridges the Victorian and Modernist periods. It focuses on imaginative literature--poetry and short fiction--which together provide an image of an uneasy and pluralistic world, one that exerted peculiar pressures on the writer. French culture--reflected in the Naturalism of Zola and the Symbolism of Baudelaire and Mallarme--evolutionary theory, and urban alienation greatly influenced the work of the fin de siecle, and the selections included here also reveal the ideas and impulses that lay behind imperialism, socialism, and the early advance of the feminist movement. Rural culture is in decline, Romanticism has faded, and dogmatic religion is being replaced by attempts at elaborating a personal order. In addition to reflecting the social and historical context, Fletcher has also included examples of the literary innovations of the age, such as stream-of-consciousness narrative, experimentation in free verse, and the impressionistic short story. The writers represented include Samuel Butler, Swinburne, Walter Pater, Robert Bridges, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, George Gissing, A.E. Housman, Rudyard Kipling, W.B. Yeats, Aubrey Beardsley, Max Beerbohm, and many others.