Child of materialism and positivism, Courbet was without a doubt one of the most complex painters of the nineteenth century. Symbolising the rejection of traditions, Courbet did not hesitate to confront the public with the truth by liberating painting of conventional rules. He became from then on the leader of pictorial realism.

Mario Paz has, in the Romantic Agony, acutely analyzed the effect of the traditions of Byron and De Sade upon poets and painters from 1800 to 1900. It is the analysis of a mood in literature. The mood may ve been transient, but it was widespread, and it was expressed in dreams of "luxurious cruelties," "fatal women," corpse-passions, and the sinful agonies of delight. Professo Praz has described the whole Romantic literature under one of its most characteristic aspects, that of erotic sensibility.

Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858) was one of the last great artists in the ukiyo-e tradition. This text provides an introduction to his work and an overview of his career.

In this original and provocative book, Timothy Bewes descends into the modern cynical consciousness with a critical assessment of the preoccupations of contemporary society.

Like Froude's biography of Carlyle, Holroyd's Shaw, and Ellmann's Joyce, Robert Baldick's Life of J.-K. Huysmans has become not just a standard reference work, to be consulted as regularly as the writing of the author whose life it chronicles, but a work of literature in its own right. First published fifty years ago, Baldick's classic biography presents a compelling narrative of Huysmans' life and work in all its various phases - from the Naturalism of the 1870s to the Decadence of the 1880s, and from the occult vogue of the 1890s to the Catholic Revival of the turn of the century - and it is written with such impeccable scholarship that it is still relied on today as regards matters of fact and detail. For this new edition - the first time the biography has been reprinted in English -Baldick's notes have been extensively revised and updated by Brendan King to take account of new developments and publications in the field of Huysmansian studies.