First published in 1899*, The Symbolist Movement in Literature* was a
highly influential work of criticism and introduced the French
Symbolists to an Anglophone readership. Arthur Symons's interest in
writers such as Verlaine and Mallarme puts him at the heart of
contemporary debates about Decadence and Symbolism in fin-de-siecle
literature, but his work was also a formative influence on modernist
writers such as James Joyce, George Eliot, Ezra Pound, and William
Butler Yeats, helping to shape the role of the Image in modernist
writing. This new critical edition makes available a key text that has
been out of print for more than 50 years. It includes an introduction,
chronology, and notes, together with appendices presenting the full text
of Symons' essay "The Decadent Movement in Literature" and a selection
of his translations of French poetry.