Glorious Perversity: The Decline and Fall of Literary Decadence

by Brian M. Stableford

A study of the decadent literary movements in England and France, focusing upon such poets and authors as Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde.

Genres: Fiction

152 pages, hardback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Brian Michael Stableford was a British science fiction writer who published more than 70 novels. His earlier books were published under the name Brian M. Stableford, but more recent ones have dropped the middle initial and appeared under the name Brian Stableford. He also used the pseudonym Brian Craig for a couple of very early works, and again for a few more recent works. The pseudonym derives from the first names of himself and of a school friend from the 1960s, Craig A. Mackintosh, with whom he jointly published some very early work.

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never bore of reading about authors like Joris-Karl Huysmans and Jean Lorrain. The latter signing off on his columns as "The Cadaver" will remain with me.

This study has provided me with more authors and works to research including Saint-Beuve and Bertrand - both of which influenced Baudelaire.

Despite my love for the subject matter, this study could certainly have been expanded and edited to be less choppy. Many of the chapters while full of great information, they felt stitched together. Given how many additional Decadent and Symbolist works the author has translated since the publication of this book, I'd imagine a new edition with more case studies would be excellent. Take for instance "The Red Spider" by Delphi Fabrice, also translated by Stableford - it would be fascinating to see how the author would place this work as a continuation of Lorrain's "Monsieur de Phocas".

[Victor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great compact overview of the Decadent movement of the late 1800s. It focuses primarily on France, though it has substantial sections on anglophone Decadents as well. It mostly covers prose writers instead of poets or artists, but most of the major practitioners of those less well travelled Decadent forms of the time make brief appearances as well.

It reads well as a companion piece to Birkett's Sins of the Fathers, though it's both a more entertaining read, with a deeper dive into the roots of French Decadence, and a much more sympathetic critical perspective on the movement. If there's anything wrong with the book as a piece of criticism, it's a lack of emphasis on some of the more problematic characteristics of Decadence, particularly its misogyny, though there are scattered mentions throughout.