In Cynara’s Shadow : Collected Essays on Ernest Dowson

Ernest Dowson has become something of a legend within studies of late nineteenth-century Decadence and is an important figure in the transition to literary Modernism. This first collection of critical essays devoted solely to Dowson draws him out of the shadows and acknowledges his talent and legacy, offering new perspectives on his oeuvre.

In the 120 years since the publication of his final poetry collection, Decorations: In Verse and Prose (1899), Ernest Dowson has become something of a Decadent legend, much anthologized and referenced in almost every study of English Decadent literature, but still is considered a minor figure of the fin de siècle. He is, in fact, an important intermediary between late nineteenth-century Decadence and literary Modernism. This first collection of critical essays devoted solely to Dowson draws him out of the shadows and acknowledges his talent and legacy. The essays in this volume by established and emergent Dowson scholars offer new perspectives on some of the most noteworthy aspects of Dowson’s oeuvre, including Catholicism and Paganism, desire and sexuality, space and place, his relationships with Decadent contemporaries including Paul Verlaine and Aubrey Beardsley, and his poetic resonance in twentieth-century literature and music.