Content area
Full Text
New Edition: Symons & Symbolism Arthur Symons. The Symbolist Movement in Literature. Matthew Creasy, ed. and intro. Manchester: Carcenet Press, 2014. xxxii + 277 pp. Paper £13.45
AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-ONE, Arthur Symons was a recognized literary critic, playwright, poet, and translator of four languages. His first book, An Introduction to the Study of Browning (1886), was widely praised, as was his first volume of poetry, Days and Nights (1889). A member of the Rhymers' Club and editor of the Savoy, Symons hired Aubrey Beardsley following his dismissal from the Yellow Book. In 1889 and 1890, Symons and Havelock Ellis travelled to France and met several writers and artists interested in the ideas associated with Decadence and Symbolism. Through articles such as "The Decadent Movement in Literature" (1893) and numerous translations of French poetry, Symons helped bring this work to English-speaking readers. However, it was the collection of essays published as The Symbolist Movement in Literature that cemented Symons's reputation.
Matthew Creasy's scholarly edition of The Symbolist Movement in Literature, the first in over fifty years, is a necessary addition to the study of Symbolism, modernism, Decadence, fin-de-siècle literature, late-nineteenth-century literary criticism, and Anglo-French literary influences. It introduced W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound to the ideas of Symbolism. In "The Perfect Critic," Eliot wrote:
But if we can recall the time when we were ignorant of the French Symbolists, and met with The Symbolist Movement in Literature, we remember that...