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Dilemmas: Stories and Studies on Sentiment
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
139 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1895
About the author
Ernest Dowson
90 books45 followersErnest Christopher Dowson was an English poet, novelist and writer of short stories, associated with the Decadent movement.
Dowson attended The Queen's College, Oxford, but left before obtaining a degree. In November 1888, he started work with his father at Dowson and Son, a dry-docking business in Limehouse, east London, established by the poet's grandfather. He led an active social life, carousing with medical students and law pupils, going to music halls, and taking the performers to dinner. Meanwhile, he was also working assiduously at his writing. He was a member of the Rhymers' Club, which included W. B. Yeats and Lionel Johnson. He was also a frequent contributor to the literary magazines The Yellow Book and The Savoy. Dowson collaborated on two unsuccessful novels with Arthur Moore, worked on a novel of his own, Madame de Viole, and wrote reviews for The Critic.
Dowson was also a prolific translator of French fiction, including novels by Balzac and the Goncourt brothers, and Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos.
In 1889, at the age of 23, Dowson fell in love with 11-year-old Adelaide "Missie" Foltinowicz, the daughter of a Polish restaurant owner. Adelaide is reputed to be the subject of one his best-known poems, Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae. He pursued her unsuccessfully; in 1897, she married a tailor who lodged above her father's restaurant and Dowson was crushed. In August, 1894, Dowson's father, who was in the advanced stages of tuberculosis, died of an overdose of chloral hydrate. His mother, who was also consumptive, hanged herself in February, 1895, and soon Dowson began to decline rapidly.
Robert Sherard one day found Dowson almost penniless in a wine bar and took him back to the cottage in Catford where he was himself living. Dowson spent the last six weeks of his life at Sherard's cottage and died there of alcoholism at the age of 32. He is buried in the Roman Catholic section of nearby Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries.
Dowson attended The Queen's College, Oxford, but left before obtaining a degree. In November 1888, he started work with his father at Dowson and Son, a dry-docking business in Limehouse, east London, established by the poet's grandfather. He led an active social life, carousing with medical students and law pupils, going to music halls, and taking the performers to dinner. Meanwhile, he was also working assiduously at his writing. He was a member of the Rhymers' Club, which included W. B. Yeats and Lionel Johnson. He was also a frequent contributor to the literary magazines The Yellow Book and The Savoy. Dowson collaborated on two unsuccessful novels with Arthur Moore, worked on a novel of his own, Madame de Viole, and wrote reviews for The Critic.
Dowson was also a prolific translator of French fiction, including novels by Balzac and the Goncourt brothers, and Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos.
In 1889, at the age of 23, Dowson fell in love with 11-year-old Adelaide "Missie" Foltinowicz, the daughter of a Polish restaurant owner. Adelaide is reputed to be the subject of one his best-known poems, Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae. He pursued her unsuccessfully; in 1897, she married a tailor who lodged above her father's restaurant and Dowson was crushed. In August, 1894, Dowson's father, who was in the advanced stages of tuberculosis, died of an overdose of chloral hydrate. His mother, who was also consumptive, hanged herself in February, 1895, and soon Dowson began to decline rapidly.
Robert Sherard one day found Dowson almost penniless in a wine bar and took him back to the cottage in Catford where he was himself living. Dowson spent the last six weeks of his life at Sherard's cottage and died there of alcoholism at the age of 32. He is buried in the Roman Catholic section of nearby Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 9, 2024
Short stories first published in 1895, each presenting a dilemma of conscience. Interesting, but it is the writing that completely amazes me -- so clear and crisp, romantically sad and full of regret. A few select quotes:
" . . . he talked divinely, of everything in the world, but very wildly and bitterly. He seemed to have been everywhere, and done everything; and at last to be tired of it all; and of himself the most."
from "An Orchestral Violin"
"I am glad that I have come back here at last. It is melancholy indeed, but then at my age one's pleasures are chiefly melancholy. One is essentially of the autumn, and it is always autumn at Bruges."
from "The Diary of a Successful Man"
"Lady Greville once said to me, in the presence of her nephew Felix Leominster, a musician too, like myself, that we three were curiously suited, for that we were, without exception, the three most cynical persons in the universe. Perhaps in a way she was right. Yet for all her cynicism Lady Greville I know has a bundle of old and faded letters, tied up in black ribbon in some hidden drawer, that perhaps she never reads now, but that she cannot forget or destroy. They are in a bold handwriting, that is, not, I think, from the miserable, old debauchee, her husband, from whom she has been separated since the first year of her marriage, and their envelopes bear Indian postmarks."
from "Souvenirs of an Egoist"
A book to read and savor, in one sitting, if possible.
" . . . he talked divinely, of everything in the world, but very wildly and bitterly. He seemed to have been everywhere, and done everything; and at last to be tired of it all; and of himself the most."
from "An Orchestral Violin"
"I am glad that I have come back here at last. It is melancholy indeed, but then at my age one's pleasures are chiefly melancholy. One is essentially of the autumn, and it is always autumn at Bruges."
from "The Diary of a Successful Man"
"Lady Greville once said to me, in the presence of her nephew Felix Leominster, a musician too, like myself, that we three were curiously suited, for that we were, without exception, the three most cynical persons in the universe. Perhaps in a way she was right. Yet for all her cynicism Lady Greville I know has a bundle of old and faded letters, tied up in black ribbon in some hidden drawer, that perhaps she never reads now, but that she cannot forget or destroy. They are in a bold handwriting, that is, not, I think, from the miserable, old debauchee, her husband, from whom she has been separated since the first year of her marriage, and their envelopes bear Indian postmarks."
from "Souvenirs of an Egoist"
A book to read and savor, in one sitting, if possible.
November 13, 2025
Oh this one broke my heart but I love how it looks at our expectations of outcomes and situations in life. How we canMt let things remain stale or stagnant, because the things truly worth loving and living for grow and change with us!
December 23, 2016
"One could not argue with a perversity so infatuate," says the narrator in one of these stories. Ernest Dowson was notorious, long, long ago, for his "decadent" poetry, his dissolute life and pathetic demise. He is recalled today chiefly by a single line of verse ("I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion"), or perhaps by this shoutout from one of Ezra Pound's poems--"Dowson found harlots cheaper than hotels." I found this collection of five stories on the 1$ shelf at a used book store. It was the third printing, from 1913, of the original 1895 edition, nicely printed on beautiful rough-cut paper. When I got around to reading them, I carried the book about for a few days, and so the binding frayed a bit. The stories are all about lost love, about men who recoil from love out of honor, ignorance or fear. The love object is generally a young woman or a younger girl who is unobtainable in some particular, or one who has matured from her innocence into a woman from whom the lover is in some way alienated. I was struck again, reading this collection, by how closely the "decadent" mindset resembles the extremes of religious devotion, in elaborating an ideal of feminine purity beneath which lurks a reservoir of dread.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews