The Fin de Siècle A Reader in Cultural History, c. 1880-1900

by Ledger, Sally; Luckhurst, Roger

• ISBN13: 9780198742791
• ISBN10: 0198742797
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-12-07
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The fin-de-siècle period--roughly the years 1880 to 1900--was characterized by great cultural and political ambivalence, an anxiety for things lost, and a longing for the new. It also included an outpouring of intellectual responses to the conflicting times from such eminent writers as T. H. Huxley, Emma Goldman, William James, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and Oscar Wilde. In this important anthology, Ledger and Luckhurst make available to students, scholars, and general readers a large body of non-literary texts which richly configure the variegated cultural history of the fin-de-siècle years. That history is here shown to inaugurate many enduring critical and cultural concerns, with sections on Degeneration, Outcast London, The Metropolis, The New Woman, Literary Debates, The New Imperialism, Socialism, Anarchism, Scientific Naturalism, Psychology, Psychical Research, Sexology, Anthropology, and Racial Science. Each section begins with an Introduction and closes with Editorial Notes that carefully situate individual texts within a wider cultural landscape.

Author Biography

Sally Ledger is Senior Lecturer in English, Birkbeck College, University of London
Roger Luckhurst is Lecturer in English, Birkbeck College, University of London

Table of Contents

Introduction: Reading the `Fin de Siecle'	xiii
Sally Ledger
Roger Luckhurst
Editors' Note	xxiv
Degeneration	1	(24)
Degeneration: A Chapter in Darwinism (1880)	3	(2)
Edwin Ray Lankester
`Zoological Retrogression' (1891)	5	(8)
H. G. Wells
Degeneration (1895)	13	(4)
Max Nordau
Regeneration: A Reply to Max Nordau (1895)	17	(2)
Egmont Hake
review of Degeneration by Max Nordau (1895)	19	(1)
William James
The Sanity of Art: An Exposure of the Current Nonsense about Artists being Degenerate (1895/1908)	20	(5)
George Bernard Shaw
Editors' Notes	22	(3)
Outcast London	25	(28)
`The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: An Inquiry into the Condition of the Abject Poor (1883)	27	(5)
Andrew Mearns
`The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon' (1885)	32	(7)
W. T. Stead
Life and Labour of the People of London (1889)	39	(6)
Charles Booth
In Darkest England and the Way Out (1890)	45	(8)
William Booth
Editors' Notes	50	(3)
The Metropolis	53	(22)
`The Mind of Crowds' (1895)	55	(6)
Gustave Le Bon
`The Metropolis and Mental Life' (1903)	61	(6)
Georg Simmel
`At the Alhambra: Impressions and Sensations' (1896)	67	(2)
Arthur Symons
Why We Attacked the Empire (1895)	69	(6)
Mrs Ormiston Chant
Editors' Notes	72	(3)
The New Woman	75	(22)
`Marriage' (1888)	77	(3)
Mona Caird
`Character Note: The New Woman' (1894)	80	(3)
`Why Women are Ceasing to Marry' (1899)	83	(5)
Ella Hepworth Dixon
`The New Aspect of the Woman Question' (1894)	88	(2)
Sarah Grand
`The New Woman in Fiction and Fact' (1894)	90	(2)
M. Eastwood
`An Appeal Against Female Suffrage' (1889)	92	(2)
Mrs Humphry Ward
`The Appeal Against Female Suffrage: A Reply' (1889)	94	(3)
Millicent Garrett Fawcett
Editors' Notes	95	(2)
Literary Debates	97	(36)
`Realism and Romance' (1886)	99	(5)
Andrew Lang
`The Decadent Movement in Literature' (1893)	104	(7)
Arthur Symons
Eliza Lynn Linton and, Thomas Hardy, `Candour in English Fiction' (1890)	111	(9)
Walter Besant
`Tommyrotics' (1895)	120	(7)
Hugh E. M. Stutfield
Editorial Comment, Daily Telegraph (14 March 1891)	127	(2)
`Henrik Ibsen' (1889)	129	(4)
Arthur Symons
Editors' Notes	130	(3)
The New Imperialism	133	(40)
The `Forward' Policy	135	(1)
The Expansion of England (1883)	135	(2)
Sir John Seeley
`The True Conception of Empire' (1897)	137	(4)
Joseph Chamberlain
speech at Drill Hall, Cape Town (18 July 1899)	141	(3)
Cecil Rhodes
Reportage	144	(1)
The Illustrated London News (14 February 1885)	144	(1)
General Gordon
from the original manuscripts of Father Joseph Ohrwalder, Ten Years' Captivity in the Mahdi's Camp 1882--92 (1893)	145	(1)
Major F. R. Wingate
`The Battle of Omdurman', With Kitchener to Khartum (1898)	146	(3)
G. W. Steevens
`Relief of Mafeking' and `London's Roar of Jubilation', Daily Mail (19 May 1900)	149	(5)
`Affairs on the Upper Congo', The Times (14 May 1897)	154	(2)
Critiques	156	(1)
```Bloody Niggers''' (1897)	156	(3)
R. B. Cunninghame Graham
An English South African's View of the Situation (1899)	159	(3)
Olive Schreiner
Imperialism: A Study (1902)	162	(4)
J. A. Hobson
`The Story of the Congo Free State' (1920)	166	(7)
E. D. Morel
Editors' Notes	168	(5)
Socialism	173	(26)
`How We Live and How We Might Live' (1887)	175	(5)
William Morris
`The Economic Basis of Socialism' (1889)	180	(5)
George Bernard Shaw
`The Soul of Man Under Socialism' (1891)	185	(6)
Oscar Wilde
Women and Socialism (1907)	191	(8)
Isabella O. Ford
Editors' Notes	197	(2)
Anarchism	199	(22)
Words of a Rebel (1885)	201	(3)
Peter Kropotkin
`Anarchy' (1888)	204	(3)
Johann [John] Most
letter to Commonweal (18 May 1889)	207	(3)
William Morris
`Anarchist', letter to Commonweal (22 June 1889)	210	(1)
`The Explosion in Greenwich Park' and `Bourdin's Antecedents', The Times (17 February 1894)	211	(4)
`Anarchism: What it Really Stands For' (1911)	215	(6)
Emma Goldman
Editors' Notes	219	(2)
Scientific Naturalism	221	(22)
`On the Physical Basis of Life' (1870)	223	(3)
T. H. Huxley
`On the Aims and Instruments of Scientific Thought' (1872)	226	(2)
W. K. Clifford
`Belfast Address' (1874)	228	(7)
John Tyndall
A Grammar of Science (1892)	235	(3)
Karl Pearson
Evolution and Ethics (1893)	238	(5)
T. H. Huxley
Editors' Notes	241	(2)
Psychology	243	(26)
`Hysteria', A Dictionary of Psychological Medicine (1892)	245	(6)
H. B. Donkin
`On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena' (1893)	251	(5)
Josef Breuer
Sigmund Freud
`The Stream of Thought', The Principles of Psychology (1890)	256	(3)
William James
`The Subliminal Consciousness' (1891)	259	(4)
F.W.H. Myers
`Nervous Diseases and Modern Life' (1895)	263	(6)
T. Clifford Allbutt
Editors' Notes	267	(2)
Psychical Research	269	(22)
`Objects of the Society' (1882)	271	(1)
`Address by the President at the First General Meeting' (1882)	272	(3)
Henry Sidgwick
`Thought-Reading' (1882)	275	(3)
William Barrett
Edmund Gurney
F.W.H. Myers
`Psychical Research', Pall Mall Gazette (21 October 1882)	278	(2)
Leader Comment
`How We Intend to Study Borderland' (1893)	280	(3)
W. T. Stead
`Telepathy: A Passing Note Reporting Progress in Telepathic Automatism' (1894)	283	(3)
W. T. Stead
`Ghosts up to Date' (1894)	286	(5)
Andrew Lang
Editors' Notes	288	(3)
Sexology	291	(24)
`Nymphomania', A Dictionary of Psychological Medicine (1892)	293	(4)
Gustave Bouchereau
Psychopathia Sexualis with Especial Reference to Antipathic Sexual Instinct: A Medico-Forensic Study (1886)	297	(6)
Richard von Krafft-Ebing
`The Intermediate Sex' (1894/1906)	303	(4)
Edward Carpenter
A Problem in Modern Ethics, Being an Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Sexual Inversion, Addressed Especially to Medical Psychologists and Turists (1896)	307	(2)
John Addington Symonds
`Case XVIII' [John Addington Symonds], Sexual Inversion (1897)	309	(6)
Havelock Ellis
Editors' Notes	313	(2)
Anthropology and Racial Science	315	(28)
`The Science of Culture', Primitive Culture (1871)	317	(4)
Edward Tylor
`The Primitive Man---Physical', The Primitive Man---Emotional', `The Primitive Man---Intellectual', The Principles of Sociology (1876)	321	(5)
Herbert Spencer
National Life from the Standpoint of Science (1900)	326	(3)
Karl Pearson
`Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope and Aims' (1904)	329	(4)
Francis Galton
`The Clash of Cultures', West African Studies (1899)	333	(3)
Mary Kingsley
Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits (volume ii)	336	(7)
A. C. Haddon
W. H. R. Rivers
Editors' Notes	339	(4)
Sources of Material	343	(6)
Secondary Reading	349	(6)
Index	355