H. P. Lovecraft referred to Park Barnitz as "a vivid decadent of the fin de siecle period who modelled his verse on Baudelaire & killed himself soon after graduation from Harvard." His one and only volume, "The Book of Jade" (1901), has become a legend in the realm of weird poetry, its technical precision and its relentless obsession with death, horror, madness, and pessimism making it a choice prize for appreciators of poetic witchery. But almost nothing is known about its young author, who died at the age of twenty-three. This comprehensive edition presents a wealth of material about David Park Barnitz-biographical, critical, and bibliographical. It contains the complete text of "The Book of Jade" along with additional poems and essays by Barnitz, some of which have never been reprinted. In addition, Gavin Callaghan has written an exhaustive biography that presents a fascinating portrait of the poet, delving into his family's ancestry and collecting widely scattered nuggets of information on Barnitz's life, work, and thought. The editors have gathered a wide array of criticism on Barnitz, including contemporary reviews and early essays by Floyd Dell, Carey McWilliams, and Joseph Payne Brennan. The book concludes with a brace of original essays on Barnitz's poetic achievement. This is the definitive edition of "The Book of Jade," featuring masses of material not available elsewhere. Table of Contents The Book of Jade, by Park Barnitz Uncollected Writings, by Park Barnitz After-Life Danse Macabre Letter to William Doxey, 1901] The Truth about Rudyard Kipling The Art of the Future Review] Bibliography Park Barnitz: A Biography, by Gavin Callaghan Criticism Contemporary Reviews The Promise of Contemporary Art Two American Poets: A Study in Possibilities, by Floyd Dell We (Almost) Die for Art, by Floyd Dell The Poet of Montsalvat, by Carey McWilliams A Land of Poets, by Carey McWilliams America's "Yellow Nineties" Poet, by Joseph Payne Brennan Renaissance, by David E. Schultz The Perfection of the Corpse: Necrophilia in The Book of Jade, by K. A. Opperman The Grotesques: Sins against the Afterlife, by Ashley Dioses Barnitz and Pessimism, by Matt Sarraf "I Am Weary of That Lidless Eye" Gazing into the Hegelian Abyss of Subjectivity in theMad Sonnets of Park Barnitz, by Chuck Caruso, Ph.D. Two Dead Men: Park Barnitz and Rudyard Kipling, by Gavin Callaghan Afterword, by Michael J. Abolafia Index of Titles and First Lines"

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1901 Edition.

Hardcover reprint of the original 1901 edition - beautifully bound in brown cloth covers featuring titles stamped in gold, 8vo - 6x9". No adjustments have been made to the original text, giving readers the full antiquarian experience. For quality purposes, all text and images are printed as black and white. This item is printed on demand. Book Information: Gautier, Judith. The Book Of Jade. Indiana: Repressed Publishing LLC, 2012. Original Publishing: Gautier, Judith. The Book Of Jade, . New York: Doxey's At The Sign Of The Lark, 1901. Subject: Chinese Poetry Translations Into English

American national trade bibliography.

Anyone who reads The Book of Jade will quickly notice a few things: the author of this collection of poems holds a pessimistic, misanthropic view of life, and his obsessions lean towards the macabre, particularly focusing on themes of death, darkness, graves, corpses, and a longing to rest among the worms. The collection presents a world where God is portrayed as foolish, other people as imbeciles, and the fate of the dead as something to be envied. Certainly not light-hearted fare! Although The Book of Jade was initially published anonymously, it didn’t take long for readers to discover the identity of its author when the obituary of David Park Barnitz, a young oriental studies scholar who passed away mere weeks after the book’s publication, admitted as much. Though somewhat uneven in quality, the work has garnered admiration from figures such as H. P. Lovecraft, Donald Wandrei, and Clark Ashton Smith, firmly establishing its place in the canon of decadent literature. This edition includes all the poems of the original 1901 edition, as well as the poem “After-Life,” which was published in Overland Monthly. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

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