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.

Palgrave Advances in Oscar Wilde Studies is a comprehensive guide to recent critical approaches. Topics covered include Gay Studies, Feminist Criticism, Material Culture, Religion, Philosophy, Performance Studies, Aestheticism, Biography, Textual Studies and Postcolonial Theory. The book is designed to acquaint readers of all levels with the history of scholarship in a range of fields and suggest ways that Wilde's work offer new areas for research. The collection also provides a Chronology and detailed bibliography.

During the last decades of the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley, Walter Pater and others changed the nature of thought concerning the human body and the physical environment that had shaped it. In response, the 1890s saw the publication of a series of remarkable literary works that had their genesis in the intense scientific and aesthetic activity of those preceding decades—texts that emphasized themes of degeneration and were themselves stylistically decompositive, with language both a surrogate for physical deformity and a source of anxiety. Susan J. Navarette examines the ways in which scientific and cultural concerns of late nineteenth-century England are coded in the horror literature of the period. By contextualizing the structural, stylistic, and thematic systems developed by writers seeking to reenact textually the entropic forces they perceived in the natural world, Navarette reconstructs the late Victorian mentalité. She analyzes aesthetic responses to trends in contemporary science and explores horror writers' use of scientific methodologies to support their perception that a long-awaited period of cultural decline had begun. In her analysis of the classics Turn of the Screw and Heart of Darkness, Navarette shows how James and Conrad made artistic use of earlier "scientific" readings of the body. She also considers works by lesser-known authors Walter de la Mare, Vernon Lee, and Arthur Machen, who produced fin de siècle stories that took the form of "hybrid literary monstrosities." To underscore the fascination with bodily decay and deformation that these writers explored, The Shape of Fear is enhanced with prints and line drawings by Victor Hugo, James Ensor, and other artists of the day. This elegantly written book formulates a new canon of late Victorian fiction that will intrigue scholars of literature and cultural history.

Wallace Thurman (1902-1934) played a pivotal role in creating and defining the Harlem Renaissance. Thurman's complicated life as a black writer is described here for the first time: from his birth in Salt Lake City, Utah; through his quixotic and spotty education; to his arrival and residence in New York City at the height of the New Negro Movement in Harlem. Seen as it often is through the life of Langston Hughes, the Harlem Renaissance is celebrated as a highly successful Afro-centrist achievement. Seen from Thurman's perspective, as set against the historical and cultural background of the Jazz Age, the accomplishments of the Harlem Renaissance appear more qualified and more equivocal. In Thurman's view the Harlem Renaissance's failure to live up to its initial promise resulted from an ideological underpinning which was overwhelmingly concerned with race. He felt that the movement's self-consciousness and faddism compromised the aesthetic standards of many of its writers and artists, including his own.