Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English Fall 12-16-2019 "Enough of the World is Mine": Decadence, Homosexuality and Catholicism in the Life of John Gray Lewis Whitaker Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Whitaker, Lewis, ""Enough of the World is Mine": Decadence, Homosexuality and Catholicism in the Life of John Gray." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2019. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/229 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. “ENOUGH OF THE WORLD IS MINE”: DECADENCE, HOMOSEXUALITY AND CATHOLICISM IN THE LIFE OF JOHN GRAY by LEWIS H. WHITAKER Under the Direction of LeeAnne Richardson, PhD ABSTRACT This project follows the life of the late-Victorian poet John Gray, who was born into lower- middle class poverty in London. Gray educated himself, rising from clerical positions with the Post Office and the Foreign Office, before meeting Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, who published his early work, and designed the seminal book of fin de siècle verse Silverpoints, for which Gray earned the epithet le plus decadent des decadents. This project considers the ways in which Gray’s associations with Ricketts and Shannon, along with Oscar Wilde, André Raffalovich and the aunt and niece couple writing as Michael Field impacted his life, from the publication of his early decadent poetry, to his renunciation of the London demimonde, to eventual ordination in the Roman Catholic Church.