Primary
Reading:
Please read
some of Swinburne's poetry from the recommended text in preparation for our
first class. You should also read several of the longer texts like Walter
Pater's Studies in the History of the Renaissance, H. Rider
Haggard's She, Sarah Grand's The Heavenly Twins, and
Hardy's The Well-Beloved. Please acquire the texts listed below,
preferably in the recommended editions (also available in QM Library). You can
reduce costs by checking amazon.co.uk or abe.co.uk for secondhand copies.
Algernon
Swinburne, Algernon Charles Swinburne, ed. Catherine Maxwell,
Everyman's Poetry Library (Orion Publishing, 1997). May be hard to find new but
can still be bought secondhand or cheaply as a kindle edition and contains all
the poems you need. A more expensive but good option is the Penguin
Classics edition of Swinburne's Poems and Ballads edited by
Kenneth Haynes (2000). All of Swinburne's poems are also available (without
annotation) on the excellent website 'The Algernon Charles Swinburne Project'.
Walter
Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance, ed. Matthew
Beaumont, World's Classics (Oxford University Press, 2010)
Walter
Pater, Appreciations with an Essay on Style. Any paperback
facsimile reprint edition from amazon.co.uk
Vernon
Lee, Hauntings and Other Fantastic Tales, eds. Catherine Maxwell
and Patricia Pulham (Broadview Press, 2006) OR Vernon Lee, The
Virgin of the Seven Daggers and Other Stories, ed. Aaron Worth (Penguin,
2022)
Rider
Haggard, She, ed. Daniel Karlin (Oxford World's Classics, 1991)
Oscar
Wilde, 'The Decay of Lying' and The Importance of Being Earnest.
Any edition containing both texts such as the Everyman edition (1996) or
the Complete Works (Collins).
Daughters
of Decadence: Women Writers of the Fin de Siècle, ed.
Elaine Showalter (Virago, 1993).
Sarah
Grand, The Heavenly Twins, intr. Carol A. Senf (Ann Arbor: Univ of
Michigan, 1992), or the cheaper facsimile reprint by BiblioBazaar. (Be careful
of other versions available on Amazon, which are invariably of poor quality.) A
free digital version of the novel can be downloaded from archive.org
Thomas Hardy, The Well-Beloved (1897),
NOT The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved (1892). Use one of the
following editions: Oxford: World's Classics, 1986; London: Everyman, Dent,
1997; Ware: Wordsworth Classics, 2000; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2007.
Secondary
Reading:
While you
are not required to buy any of the following texts, all of which are available
in QM Library, it is strongly recommended that you look at least two or three
suggestions in preparation for the module.
Harold
Bloom, Chs 1-8 of Yeats (London and Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1970). See especially Ch 2: 'Late Victorian Poetry and Pater'.
Harold
Bloom, 'Pater', in Figures of Capable Imagination (New York:
Seabury Press, 1976). Also available as 'The Crystal Man', the introduction to
Bloom's Selected Prose of Walter Pater (New York: Signet
Classics; paperback) a good selection if you can get hold of it.
Bram
Djikstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in
Fin-de- Siècle Culture (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
1986)
Linda
Dowling, 'The Decadent and the New Woman', Nineteenth-Century Fiction 33
(1979), 434-53
Linda
Dowling, Language and Decadence in the Victorian Fin de Siècle (Princeton
University Press, 1986).
Stefano
Evangelista, British Aestheticism and Ancient Greece: Hellenism,
Reception, Gods in Exile (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
Ian
Fletcher, Decadence and the 1890s (London: Edward Arnold,
1979)
Frank
Kermode, Ch 1 & 6 of Romantic Image (Ark paperbacks/RKP,
1986)
Sally
Ledger, The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin de Siècle (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1997)
Gail
Marshall ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Fin de Siècle (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007)
Camille
Paglia, Chapters 18-21 of Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti
to Emily Dickinson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991)
Elaine
Showalter, Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siècle (London:
Virago, 1990)
You may
also find it useful to look at Strangeness and Beauty: An Anthology of
Aesthetic Criticism 1840-1910, 2 vols, eds. Eric Warner and Graham Hough,
Vol. I: Ruskin to Swinburne, Vol. II: Pater to Symons (Cambridge University
Press, 1983). These volumes are available in QM Library, but can be obtained
secondhand from amazon.co.uk