The fin de siècle not only designated the end of the Victorian epoch but also marked a significant turn towards modernism. Extraordinary Aesthetes critically examines literary and visual artists from England, Ireland, and Scotland whose careers in poetry, fiction, and illustration flourished during the concluding years of the nineteenth century.

This collection draws special attention to the exceptional contributions that artists, poets, and novelists made to the cultural world of the late 1880s and 1890s. The essays illuminate a range of established, increasingly acknowledged, and lesser-known figures whose contributions to this brief but remarkably intense cultural period warrant close attention. Such figures include the critically neglected Mabel Dearmer, whose stunning illustrations appear in Evelyn Sharp’s radical fairy tales for children. Equally noteworthy is the uncompromising short fiction of Ella D’Arcy, who played a pivotal role in editing the most famous journal of the 1890s, The Yellow Book. The discussion extends to a range of legendary writers, including Max Beerbohm, Oscar Wilde, and W.B. Yeats, whose works are placed in dialogue with authors who gained prominence during this period. Bringing women’s writing to the fore, Extraordinary Aesthetes rebalances the achievements of artists and writers during the rapidly transforming cultural world of the fin de siècle.

Extraordinary Aesthetes sheds light on English, Irish, and Scottish artists whose careers thrived during the nineteenth century.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Joseph Bristow

Part One: New Women, Female Aesthetes, and the Emergence of Decadence

1. Impressionistic Photography and the flâneuse in Amy Levy’s Romance of a Shop
S. Brooke Cameron

2. The Decay of Marriage in Ella D’Arcy’s Decadent New Woman Fiction
Kate Krueger

3. Mabel Dearmer’s Decadent Way
Diana Maltz

Part Two: Femininity, Masculinity, and Fin-de-Siècle Aesthetics

4. “So much too little”: Alice Meynell, Walter Pater, and the Question of Influence
Beth Newman

5. Richard Le Gallienne and the Rhymers: Masculine Minority in the 1890s
Emily Harrington

6. Max Beerbohm’s “Improved” Intentions by Oscar Wilde: The Aesthetics of Cosmesis
Megan Becker

Part Three: Women, Babies, Moons – 1890s Poetics

7. Dollie Radford and the Case of the Disappearing Babies
Julie Wise

8. “She hath no air”: Mary Coleridge’s Moon
Kasey Bass

Part Four: Aestheticism, Decadence, and the Modern Age

9. Radical Empathy in Dora Sigerson’s Fairy Changeling and Broadside Poems of 1916–17
So Young Park

10. The Boom in Yellow: The Afterlife of the 1890s
Kristin Mahoney

Contributors

Index

“[Extraordinary Aesthetes] is rich in material and interpretation and introduces the reader to aspects of cultural and literary life at the end of the nineteenth century, which will certainly enrich any previous studies and encourage further reading. Bristow’s mission to extend and transform his cited key texts is successfully achieved.”

"This extraordinary collection of essays persuasively demonstrates that the 1890s was and was not the period articulated for us in the twentieth century. It works across disciplines as authors discuss disappearing babies, feminine ennui, the moon, or the ‘improved’ personal books by Max Beerbohm, alongside national politics and artistic media, such as photography or illustrations. Devilishly beautiful and beautifully written, Extraordinary Aesthetes shows us a new vision for an altogether different fin de siècle and its twentieth-century yellow bloom."

"Aesthetes were never ordinary, and this collection is filled with scholarship that demonstrates just how breathtakingly unconventional and creative they could be. So the volume itself is extraordinary. Joseph Bristow has assembled essays that live up to their subjects by successfully crossing disciplinary and other divides, celebrating art that astonishes, and turning criticism into something that is – to paraphrase Wilde’s Gwendolen Fairfax – not a duty to read but a pleasure."

"The most rewarding and timely achievement of Extraordinary Aesthetes is that it restores the defining role played by women writers in shaping the culture of the 1890s, a turning point in modern literary history. The essays in this volume – several of them beautifully illustrated – are full of unfamiliar stories and archival discoveries that open up new perspectives on the literature of aestheticism, gender, and the visual."

"This beautifully edited collection is testimony to the scholarship that continues to flourish on the work of Decadents, as well as women writers and artists at the fin de siècle. Extraordinary Aesthetes shines light on the contribution of lesser-known figures like Mabel Dearmer, Mary Coleridge, and Dora Sigerson and broadens our understanding of persistent Decadent sensibilities in the early twentieth century."