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That Way Madness Lies: Max Nordau on Fin-de-Siècle Genius
by Hans-Peter Söder The intent of this first major English-language volume on Max Nordau's critique of Modernism is to contextualize one of the most popular books of the Fin de Siècle, Max Nordau`s Degeneration. Max Nordau was chiefly responsible for giving the period the negative connotation that rests with it to the present day. Degeneration was the first of three classic text on what we now call Decadence, and between 1890 and 1900 it was one of Europe´s ten bestselling books. But how did it come about that one of the most sensitive literary critics of the time came to dismiss its genius? In analyzing the cultural critiques of the now little-known and seldom-read philosopher Max Nordau, this intellectual biography explicitly shifts attention away from canonized and frequently cannibalized fin-de-siècle authors. Max Nordau's international popularity in his own time is an indication that his concerns for the direction of Modernist culture resonated with his readers. Once Degeneration is seen in its fin-de-siècle context, Max Nordau`s willingness to take on the greatest literary reputations of the late nineteenth century, and his attempt to quench Walter Pater´s famous "hard and gem-like flame" of Decadence appears in a different light. Hardbound: 15.9 x 23.5 cm., 260 pp., illustrated. ISBN 1 904201 17 5 £40.0 / $65.00 More information |
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Symbolist Objects: Materiality and Subjectivity at the Fin-de-Siècle
edited by Claire I. R. O'Mahony This interdisciplinary volume explores the intersections between Symbolist aesthetics and material objects and interiors. Fourteen international scholars examine these debates from the overlapping perspectives of the disciplines of literary studies, the history of art, design and visual culture and aesthetic philosophy. Five thematic sections apply a spectrum of approaches to visual and literary case studies from fin-de-siècle Europe. The book opens with analyses of the interiority articulated through the domestic environments of Comte Robert de Montesquiou and Oscar Wilde. The second section juxtaposes four engagements with the artful page and the ‘book beautiful’ devised by Stéphane Mallarmé, John Gray, William Morris and Alfred Jarry. The third cluster of essays considers art works and spaces by Fernand Khnopff, Puvis de Chavannes and René Binet which took on talismanic status at the fin de siècle. By contrast the interventions in the fourth section explore the gendered tensions between preciousness and consumer culture in the writings of Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Joséphin Péladan and Georges Rodenbach, and both Rachilde’s evocations of, and René Lalique’s designs for, jewellery. The collection concludes with meditations on the legacies of Symbolist aesthetics within the work of Robert Motherwell and contemporary installation art. This anthology should be of special interest to fin-de-siècle scholars, whilst accessible to a more general readership. Hardbound: 15.9 x 23.5 cm., 444 pp., illustrated. ISBN 1 904201 15 1 £40.0 / $65.00 More information |
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Masking the Text: Essays on Literature & Mediation in the 1890s New Series: Essays on 1890s Print Culture. Volume 2 by Nicholas Frankel The ten essays in Masking The Text range across a diversity of subjects of interest to scholars of the 1890s, including books by Oscar Wilde, Michael Field, George Meredith, the Rhymers Club, and William Morris, illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley, Charles Ricketts and William Hyde, typography by James McNeill Whistler and William Morris, and the literary implications of forgery, collecting, and typewriting. Masking The Text will be of interest to anybody fascinated by the 1890s, late-Victorian literature, art and book history, illustration, or the revival of printing. It will also appeal to readers interested in the relevance to literature of bibliography or the intersections between literature and print media. Numerous black and white illustrations accompany Frankel’s text. Hardbound: 15.9 x 23.5 cm., 300 pp., illustrated. ISBN 978 1 904201 14 4 £40.00 / $65.00 More information |
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The Bookplates of Aubrey Beardsley Mark Samuels Lasner Highly decorative in contrasting black and white, small in scale, and executed with an eye towards reproduction, the celebrated drawings of Aubrey Beardsley (1872-98) are ideally suited for use as bookplates. This informative book describes and illustrates for the first time forty plates made from his works. These include the three bookplates the artist actually designed for the purpose - for the physician and scholar John Lumsden Propert, for his patron Herbert Charles Pollitt, and for the poet Olive Custance, who married Oscar Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. Softbound: 15.6 x 23.4 cm, 108 pp., illustrated. ISBN 1 904201 10 5 £12.50 / $25.00 More information |
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Frank Miles and Oscar Wilde - "such white lilies" Molly Whittington-Egan It was a hot summer's day in 1876, and the two young men, in their prime, were strolling around the ambages of a rectory garden. There were rose walks, and everywhere such white lilies. The friends were close and confiding: they talked with passion of art, literature and religion, and other more intimate matters. Baskets of strawberries were brought between sets of the new lawn-tennis. Oscar was awfully good at it - gangling, yet muscular and quick. He was in particularly fine spirits, because he has just got his First. Actually, he had never visited Frank's family at Bingham Rectory before... Softbound: 15.6 x 23.4 cm, 112 pp., illustrated. ISBN 1 904201 09 1 £12.50 / $25.00 More information |
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