Arthur Symons, 'Spiritual Adventures'

Arthur Symons is best known for his poetry, his critical study The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1900), and his editorship of The Savoy (1896). Poised between decadence and modernism, his short fiction has been less heralded, but deserves a much wider audience for its haunting portraits of painters, pianists, actresses, and aesthetes struggling to balance the competing demands of art and life. Fully annotated and supplemented by valuable contextual materials, the first critical edition of Symons's fiction reprints Spiritual Adventures (1905), alongside four uncollected early stories and a revealing selection of his essays on travel, music, and theatre.