The Women Aesthetes:

British Writers, 1870–1900

General Editor: Jane Spirit
Volume Editors: Sue Asbee and Valerie Purton


3 Volume Set: 1200pp: September 2013
978 1 84893 227 2: 234x156mm: £275.00/$495.00

The aesthetic movement emerged in the late nineteenth century as an artistic and literary conceit that favoured beauty over purpose. Recurring themes in these writings include a preoccupation with the past, a use of archaic expression and the importance of the aesthetic above all else. The material in this collection provides a representative selection of essays, fiction, poetry and drama by female authors of the genre.

Organized chronologically each volume covers a particular decade. The third volume only includes writers whose work appeared in that benchmark of aestheticism, The Yellow Book. Each writer is introduced and their critical reception assessed, whilst wider comparison with nineteenth-century literary development is also explored. The publication of these works – many for the first time in a scholarly edition – will allow further critical study of the genre.

  • Places female-authored works within the wider context of Victorian aestheticism
  • Most works published for the first time in a critical edition
  • Apparatus contains: substantial general introduction, headnotes and endnotes
  • Consolidated index in final volume

Contents

Volume 1
Ouida [Marie Louise de la Ramee], Folle Farine (1871), Princess Napraxine (1884); Rhoda and Agnes Garrett, ‘Suggestions for House Decorating’, in Painting, Woodwork and Furniture (1876); Violet Fane [Mary Montgomerie Currie], The Queen of Fairies and other Poems (1876); Alice Meynell, Preludes (1875), The Rhythm of Life and other essays (1893), The Colour of Life and other essays on things seen and heard (1896); George Fleming [Constance Fletcher] Mirage (1878); Rhoda Broughton, Second Thoughts (1880)

Volume 2
Lucas Malet [Mary St Leger Harrison], Mrs Lorimer (1883), The Wages of Sin (1891); Janey Sevilla (Callendar) Campbell, Rainbow Music (1886); Amy Levy, A Minor Poet and Other Poems (1884); Florence Farr, Dancing Faun (1894); Mabel Wotton, A Pretty Radical (1895); Una Ashworth Taylor, Nets for the Wind (1896); Michael Field [K Bradley and E Cooper], ‘Equal Love’, in The Pageant (1896), In the Name of Time (1919)

Volume 3
Vernon Lee [Violet Paget], Euphorion (1885), Baldwin (1886), Juvenilia (1887); Rosamund Marriott-Watson, The Bird-Bride: A Volume of Ballads and Sonnets (1889); Gilbert H Page [Ella D’Arcy], ‘The Smile’, in Argosy (1891), ‘In a Cathedral’, in Argosy (1892), ‘Personality in Art’ in Westminster Review (1893); Pearl Richard Craigie [J O Hobbes], The Tales of John Oliver Hobbes (1894); Charlotte Mew, ‘Passed’, in Yellow Book (1894); Ada Leverson, ‘The Advisability of Not Being brought up in a Handbook: A Trivial Tragedy for Wonderful People’, in Punch (1895); Dollie Radford, A Light Load (1891), Songs and Other Verses (1895); Edith Nesbit, ‘Miss Lorrimore’s Career’, in Sylvia’s Journal (1894); Netta Syrett, ‘Fairy Gold’, in Temple Bar (1896); Olive Custance, Opals (1897)

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