I was rather surprised you left out evilin war in te 20. I think hehe flirted with decond so as his characters did. Yes, i agree on beardsley. Ause it was like a spirit of the age from the 18 80 through too. And there were other people too. Like kenneth graham, famous as the writer of wind in the willows who published in the yellow book. Writers like e nesbit, famous for the railway children, who also kind of picked up the styles and concerns of decadence to be in with the cool crowd. So that's why it's, sorry, neal, but agree with you. It's
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the British phase of a movement that spread across Europe in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries. Influenced by Charles Baudelaire and by Walter Pater, these Decadents rejected the mainstream Victorian view that art needed a moral purpose, and valued instead the intense sensations art provoked, celebrating art for art’s sake. Oscar Wilde was at its heart, Aubrey Beardsley adorned it with his illustrations and they, with others, provoked moral panic with their supposed degeneracy. After burning brightly, the movement soon lost its energy in Britain yet it has proved influential.
The illustration above, by Beardsley, is from the cover of the first edition of The Yellow Book in April 1894.
With
Neil Sammells
Professor of English and Irish Literature and Deputy Vice Chancellor at Bath Spa University
Kate Hext
Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Exeter
And
Alex Murray
Senior Lecturer in English at Queen’s University, Belfast
Producer: Simon Tillotson