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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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III. John Gray: Dandy, Disciple .............................................................................................. 189
IV. Founding the Vale Press ................................................................................................... 205
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 229
BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 235
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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
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Description: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 th
