Fin de Steele : A Selection of Late Nineteenth-Century Literature
and Art. Chosen by Nevile Wallis. With a Note on the Period by Holbrook Jackson. (Allan Wingate. 10s. 6d.) Tilts elegantly produced volume with its yellow jacket with a black- and-white drawing by Aubrey Beardsley attempts to evoke the brilliant talents of the 'nineties, but it is disappointing. The stars of the period are represented by short fragments only—Oscar Wilde by The Selfish Giant and Herod's speech from Salome and a short extract from De Profundis, and Whistler by even shorter extracts —but there is enough to give a quick cross-section of the literature of the period. Perhaps one is a little weary of bejewelled prose and the self-conscious seeking out of sin and of decadence, but Mr. Wallis has cast his net, wide and has produced some little-known pieces. The plates give a far more comprehensive study of the art of the period. Here are several caricatures by Max Beerbohm, two superb woodcuts by Sir William Nicholson and little-known works by Constantin Guys and Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as several of Aubrey Beardsley's. drawings. Mr. Holbrook Jackson in his intro- duction expresses the hope that Mr. 'Wallis may collect an even larger anthology. This seems a good idea, as the weakness of the present book is that it does not give enough of the works of men like Wilde, Pater and Richard Le Gallienne. The page and a-half extracts from Marius the Epicurean does not do Pater justice, nor does Dowson's Impenitentia Ultima represent the best of his work.
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