About the Book
Famed for his singular prose style as much as for his controversial aestheticist principles, Walter Pater (1839-1894) was one of the great essayists in a century of great essayistic writing. His first book, Studies in the History of the Renaissance - one of the most original and influential texts of the Victorian Aesthetic Movement - was described by Arthur Symons as `the most beautiful book of prose in our literature', and his later work moved Vernon Lee to call him `the natural exponent of the highest aesthetic doctrine'. Selected Essays is a generous gathering of Pater's essays on literature, art, history, philosophy and mythology - all of them, in the words of Oscar Wilde, `delicately wrought works of art'. The selection is accompanied by Alex Wong's critical and biographical introduction and rich explanatory notes.
About the Author :
Walter Horatio Pater was born in East London in 1839 and lived for a time in Enfield before the Pater household moved to Canterbury in 1853. There Walter attended the King’s School, proceeding in 1858 to the Queen’s College, Oxford, as an undergraduate. In 1864, having remained in Oxford, he was made a fellow of Brasenose College, where he taught Classics and Philosophy. He retained his fellowship for the rest of his life. From around the time of this appointment, Pater began publishing critical essays on literature and art, gradually gaining a reputation for fine, idiosyncratic prose, sceptical philosophy, and a distinctive aestheticist outlook. Some of these essays were included in his first book, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), which made his name not only as a stylist and perceptive critic, but also as a controversial thinker whose sympathy with the ‘pagan’ sensibility and the ‘epicurean’ mode of life attracted considerable hostility. Other critical essays were collected in the 1889 volume Appreciations, while Pater’s historical novel Marius the Epicurean had appeared in 1885, and some of his works of short fiction had been gathered together in a volume entitled Imaginary Portraits in 1887. Living with his two unmarried sisters and dividing his time between West London and his Oxford college, Pater had become one of the most important figures in the British Aesthetic Movement. His essays on critical theory helped to shape the values of many younger writers and artists, while his subtle representations of various aesthetic and philosophical temperaments, both in his critical studies and in his fictional narratives, exercised a large influence on notions of conduct, taste and moral feeling in certain artistic and intellectual spheres. In 1893 was published his final book, Plato and Platonism, based on a series of lectures he had delivered to Oxford students. After an attack of rheumatic fever or pleurisy, Pater died suddenly of heart failure in Oxford in 1894. His grave may be seen there in the Holywell Cemetery. In the following years Pater’s friends oversaw the publication of several further volumes of previously uncollected essays, including Greek Studies (1895), Miscellaneous Studies (1895), and Essays from the Guardian (1896), as well as an unfinished novel, Gaston de Latour (1896). Alex Wong was born in 1988 in London, where for the most part he was schooled, though he spent much of his childhood in O’ahu, Hawai’i. He studied and now teaches English literature at the University of Cambridge. Poems Without Irony, his first collection of poetry, was published by Carcanet in 2016, and his original and translated verse has appeared in PN Review, New Poetries VI, The Forward Book of Poetry 2018, and elsewhere. He also edits and introduces the Selected Verse of Algernon Charles Swinburne and the Selected Essays of Walter Pater for Carcanet Classics. He is the author of a critical book, The Poetry of Kissing in Early Modern Europe (2017), and his studies of English literature have appeared in various periodicals. Shadow and Refrain is his second collection of poems.
Review :
'Pater is a shade or trace in virtually every writer of significance from Hopkins and Wilde to Ashbery.'
Denis Donoghue, Walter Pater: Lover of Strange Souls
'Alex Wong's intelligent selection for Carcanet includes the obligatory essays on Leonardo (1869), Botticelli (1870) and Giorgione (1877), as well as the notorious conclusion to The Renaissance (1873) ... Wong's succinct notes cover an impressive range and his selection for Carcanet is an excellent starting point for the first-time reader.'
Elizabeth Prettejohn, London Review of Books
'Eloquently synopsizes the major arguments regarding certain hallmarks of Pater's critical stance and aestheticist worldview... A welcome occurrence and worthy of notice and commendation... There is much that will reward the reader intrepid enough to follow both the main roads and the byways of Pater's thought'
Meghan Freeman, English Literature in Translation
'Wong's introduction is enormously stimulating and suggestive, elegantly written, and thoughtfully organized and it takes the reader to the shore of the vast sea of Pater's work anthologized in the main body of the text... this is a portable Pater that provides enough stimulus, raw text, and admirable, thoughtful annotation to act as an outstanding guide to a great writer.'
J. B. Bullen, Studies in Walter Pater and Aestheticism
