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UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Aesthetic Book of Decadent Literature, 1870-1914 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/12m8g9f7 Author Williford, Daniel Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The Aesthetic Book of Decadent Literature, 1870-1914 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English By Daniel Patrick Williford 2015 © Copyright by Daniel Patrick Williford 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Aesthetic Book of Decadent Literature 1870-1914 By Daniel Patrick Williford Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles, 2015 Professor Joseph E. Bristow, Chair This dissertation argues for a reading of English Aesthetic and Decadent literature within the context of the limited-edition, artistically produced aesthetic book. Within studies in print culture and the history of the book, late nineteenth-century England is an established center in the revival of fine arts printing owing to the influence of the Chiswick Press, the Daniel Press, the Kelmscott Press, the Doves Press, the Vale Press, and the Eragny Press. Yet little scholarly attention has been paid to the overlap of these efforts in artistic book design with the literature of the Aesthetic and later Decadent movements. In the first chapter, I argue that Pre-Raphaelite artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Poems (1870) was the first book of literature that sought to be a total art object, designed and illustrated by Rossetti himself. I also discuss Simeon Solomon’s A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep (1871) as the first aesthetic book of symbolist literature that was based on Rossetti’s Poems. The second chapter focuses on Aesthetic theorist Walter Pater’s collaboration with the printer Charles Henry Olive Daniel in their production of An Imaginary Portrait (1894) as a ii limited-edition book. I suggest the way that Pater’s story, within the context of Daniel’s printed volume, can be read to show that people who had a highly-refined aesthetic sensibility often constituted a rare and even an elite psychological type. I show that his work frequently centers on representations of same-sex desire, and I suggest that Pater’s Aesthetic theory is also a theory of queer personhood. The third chapter concentrates on Charles Ricketts’s and William Llewellyn Hacon’s Vale Press. I show that the aesthetic book has a particular valence when it is also a work of Decadent literature. Within Decadence as a literary movement, an ironic appropriation of Aestheticism allows a community of writers to portray same-sex desire as as a style of artifice against nature. Once Aestheticism becomes associated with effeminacy and psychological androgyny, the aesthetic book of Decadent literature becomes the model of a rare, refined, and collectible object that prefigures the community formation of queer outsider identities. iii The dissertation of Daniel Patrick Williford is approved. Helen E. Deutsch Johanna R. Drucker Arthur L. Little Joseph E. Bristow, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2015 iv DEDICATION To Maryann McDonald The mother will not turn, who thinks she hears Her nursling’s speech first grow articulate; But breathless, with averted eyes elate She sits, with open lips and open ears, That it may call her twice. ‘Mid doubts and fears Thus oft my soul has hearken’d; till the song, A central moan for days, at length found tongue, And the sweet music well’d and the sweet tears. —Dante Gabriel Rossetti v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................... viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................ x CURRICULUM VITAE .............................................................................................................. xiii Introduction: The Decadent Book of Aesthetic Literature ............................................................. 1 I. The Nineteenth-Century Revival of Fine Arts Printing ......................................................... 11 II. Pre-Raphaelitism, Aestheticism, Romanticism .................................................................... 20 III. Decadence, Degeneration, and Social Topographies .......................................................... 31 IV. Summary of Chapters ......................................................................................................... 46 Chapter 1: The Pre-Raphaelite Intervention ................................................................................. 53 I. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the “Morbid P.R.B.” .................................................. 54 II. The Germ and Aesthetic Book Design ................................................................................. 78 III. F.S. Ellis – The Pre-Raphaelite Publisher ........................................................................... 81 IV. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Painter-Poet-Bookmaker .............................................................. 85 V. Simeon Solomon’s Aesthetic Book of Queer Love Revealed .............................................. 97 Chapter 2: Walter Pater’s Aestheticism and the Space of the Book ........................................... 118 I. The Daniel Press and “The Child in the House” ................................................................. 124 II. The Material Conditions of Aesthetic Philosophy ............................................................. 129 III. Charles Lamb’s Aesthetic Criticism ................................................................................. 142 IV. Pater’s Sexual Scandal ...................................................................................................... 157 Chapter 3: The Decadent Vale Press .......................................................................................... 170 I. The Dial and Community Formation .................................................................................. 174 II. The Poisonous Book of the Decadent Anti-hero ................................................................ 178 vi III. John Gray: Dandy, Disciple .............................................................................................. 189 IV. Founding the Vale Press ................................................................................................... 205 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 229 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 235 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Title page for The Early Italian Poets from Ciullo d'Alcamo to Dante Alighieri (1861) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti ..................................................................................................... 52 Figure 2. Binding for Dante and his Circle 1100-1200-1300 (1860) ........................................... 94 Figure 3. Binding for Goblin Market and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti (1862) ................. 94 Figure 4. Binding for The Comedy of Dante Alighieri part I – the Hell by William Michael Rossetti (1865) ...................................................................................................................... 94 Figure 5. Binding for Atalanta in Calydon by A. C. Swinburne (1865) ....................................... 94 Figure 6. Binding for The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti (1866) .... 95 Figure 7. Binding for Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1870) ................................................... 95 Figure 8: Detail of front cover design for Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1870) ................... 95 Figure 9. Cover of A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep by Simeon Solomon (1871) ................... 96 Figure 10. Frontispiece and title page for A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep by Simeon Solomon (1871) .................................................................................................................... 96 Figure 11. Prospectus issued by the Daniel Press announcing the availability of An Imaginary Portrait by Walter Pater: The Child in the House. Printed in the Fell Type featuring the insignia of the press. ........................................................................................................... 122 Figure 12. Sample two-page layout of the Daniel Press edition of An Imaginary Portrait using the Fell type. ........................................................................................................................ 122 Figure 13. Detail of the original version of “Imaginary Portraits. I. The Child in the House” from Macmillan's Magazine (October 1878). ............................................................................. 123 viii Figure 14. Detail of the Daniel Press edition of An Imaginary Portrait showing his use of the Fell type. ..................................................................................................................................... 123 Figure 15. Blue-gray paper cover of the Daniel Press edition of An Imaginary Portrait showing the italic Fell type. ..............................................................................................................
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