The Image of Huysmans

Interest in the French Decadent writer Joris-Karl Huysmans has never been higher since his lifetime. In addition to ""A Rebours"" (""Against Nature"") and ""La-Bas"" (""Down There""), which have seldom been out of print, new editions, reprints, translations, biographies and a bibliography have steadily increased. This book is a summa of all works on or by Huysmans. The work has parallel roles - to try and present Huysmans as he wished to project himself both in public and private, to marry this with the refracted image consciously or unconsciously placed before English and American readers down the years since 1880, and to overlay the developing discovery and use of a modern threat to art with its Impressionistic new ""realism"", as applied to the subject in his later years. To this end are assembled a chronology, a section on the works and one on the life, a conclusion, an epilogue, and an appendix (""An Iconography"") with a wealth of photographs and memorabilia. As full a portrait as we may expect emerges, and with it the rich associations with Flaubert, Zola, the Goncourts, Verlaine, Mallarme, Arthur Symons, and an influence that continues to this day.