Ernest Dowson

Ernest Christopher Dowson (2 August 1867 - 23 February 1900) was an English poet, novelist, short-story writer, often associated with the Decadent movement. 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. Later in his career, Dowson was a prolific translator of French fiction, including novels by Balzac and the Goncourt brothers, and Les Liaisons dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos. In 1889, aged 23, Dowson became infatuated with the 11 year old Adelaide "Missie" Foltinowicz, daughter of a Polish restaurant owner; in 1893 he unsuccessfully proposed to her. To Dowson's despair, Adelaide was eventually to marry a tailor.

The Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson By Ernest Dowson

Ernest Christopher Dowson (2 August 1867 - 23 February 1900) was an English poet, novelist, and short-story writer, often associated with the Decadent movement. The poems collected here contain many poems full of fi-de-si cle world-weariness and melancholic pessimism. Dowson's work clearly shows the influence of the poetry of the French poets - Verlaine, Rimbaud and Baudelaire.

This vintage book contains Ernest Dowson's 1905 collection of poetry, "The Poems of Ernest Dowson". A fantastic compendium of diverse poesy, this volume would make for a worthy addition to any collection, and is highly recommended for fans of decadent poetry. Ernest Dowson (1867 - 1900) was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He is commonly associated with the 'Decadent movement', and best remembered for such vivid phrases as 'Days of Wine and Roses' and 'Gone with the Wind'. Many antiquarian texts such as this are becoming increasingly rare and expensive. With this in mind, we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition - complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.

The poems collected in this volume are exquisite and languorous expressions of a spirit of self-indulgence, eroticism and moral rebelliousness that emerged in the late Victorian age. They deal with eternal themes of transition, artifice and, above all, the cruel ravages of time - often depicting flowers, with their heady, perfumed beauty, as the embodiment of decay and desire. Decadent Poetry brings together the works of many fascinating writers - Oscar Wilde on tainted love and the torments of the human spirit, Arthur Symons on an absinthe-induced stupor and the mysteries of the night, Rosamund Marriott Watson on disenchantment and memory, W. B. Yeats on waning passion and faded beauty, Ernest Dowson on lust and despair and Lord Alfred Douglas on shame and secret love, among many others of this exhilarating poetic movement.

A collection of Downson's letters that provide a wealth of biographical information and add enough to a knowledge of the literary history of his time (late 19th-century England) to bring to the reader this outstanding volume.