Madder Music, Stronger Wine The Life of Ernest Dowson, Poet and Decadent

by Adams, Jad

• ISBN13: 9781860647147
• ISBN10: 1860647146
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-01-12
• Publisher: Tauris Parke Paperbacks

Summary

Ernest Dowson, one of the major poets of the romantic late Victorian Decadent period, died in 1900 at the age of 32, an alcoholic and a severe depressive. He created much of his best work when he was suffering from the tuberculosis which was finally to kill him. This little understood major figure of the Victorian literary world wrote some of the most quoted lyrics in English verse in the company of contemporaries such as Oscar Wilde and W. B. Yeats. This full biography explores Dowson's strange delights and sexual excesses while providing fascinating insights into the bohemian circles of London and Paris in the romantic fin de siecle period, and the bizarre and outrageous characters who made up "the Decadents".

Author Biography

Jad Adams is a producer of history documentaries and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vii
List of Illustrations	viii
Introduction	ix
The Pagan Child	1	(9)
The Pessimistic Student	10	(9)
Dowson and Son	19	(12)
The Serious Rhymers	31	(13)
Down Among the Daycadongs	44	(11)
Moral Torture	55	(12)
The Adventure of Literature	67	(13)
Bright Lights	80	(12)
Decadent Disintegration	92	(13)
Savoy Days	105	(12)
Paris Nights	117	(11)
Savage Beauty	128	(13)
The Devil's Dance	141	(12)
The Valley of Humiliation	153	(11)
The Dying of Ernest Dowson	164	(8)
Friends of Ernest Dowson	172	(9)
The Dowson Legacy	181	(6)
Appendix: Dowson's Major Works	187	(2)
Notes	189	(16)
Index	205