Michael Field, For That Moment Only and Other Prose Works
Edited by Alex Murray and Sarah Parker
Critical Texts 72 / Jewelled Tortoise 8•4 July 2022
- ‘Alex Murray’s and Sarah Parker’s edition of Michael Field’s short prose, For That Moment Only, considers the small-scale, gem-like pieces that were either lifted from the diary or specifically composed for publication. These range from essays or even sermons to sketches, impressions, vignettes, croquis, short stories and pieces of memorably poetic prose. In their excellent and detailed introduction, the editors describe croquis or prose poems as “the fragmented and fleeting poetic forms we associate with modernism”, though this notional “modernity of form” goes back not only to the 1860s, with Baudelaire’s Petits Poèmes en prose and Pater’s early essays, but also to Novalis and Schlegel as well as Coleridge.’ — Angela Leighton, Times Literary Supplement 17 February 2023
La Découverte de l’île Frivole by Gabriel-François Coyer
A Bilingual Edition by Jean-Alexandre Perras
Critical Texts 76•16 September 2022
Decadent Writings of Aubrey Beardsley
Edited by Sasha Dovzhyk and Simon Wilson
Critical Texts 78 / Jewelled Tortoise 10•18 November 2022
- ‘Sections of [Under the Hill] appeared, heavily edited, in The Savoy during Beardsley’s life, and it has been reissued several times since in varying degrees of expurgation. But it has never received the lavish scholarly attention that Sasha Dovzhyk and Simon Wilson bestow in Decadent Writings of Aubrey Beardsley.’ — Colton Valentine, New Yorker 13 February 2023
- ‘Sasha Dovzhyk and Simon Wilson’s edition... offers a thorough and judicious introduction to a figure whose influence as an artist is uncontested while making a compelling case for reconsidering Beardsley’s significance as a writer... Their scrupulously scholarly edition strikes a deft balance between providing a rich resource for Beardsley scholars and making Under the Hill accessible to general readers. They provide able guidance to Beardsley’s densely allusive world, painstakingly tracking down and teasing apart the thicket of references threaded throughout Beardsley’s prose... One of the pleasures of the edition is the clear personal investments of the editors; this is clearly a labour of love and their admiration for their subject is – in a metaphor Beardsley himself would relish – contagious.’ — Nicole Fluhr, The Wildean 64, 2024, 206-09
- ‘The appearance of this volume is a notable event in the history of publishing, of nineteenth-century erotica, of the fine arts and of the cosmopolitan spirit of the fin de siècle... an elegant, allusive work of scholarship freighted with the learned references that the art of Aubrey Beardsley demands and deserves.’ — John Stokes, Studies in Walter Pater and Aestheticism 8, 2023, 121-25
Alexis Piron, Le Claperman and L’Âne d’or
Edited by Derek Connon
Critical Texts 84•1 December 2022
Ramón María del Valle Inclán, Savage Comedies
Translated and edited by Christopher Colbath and Luis M. González
New Translations 15•18 March 2022
- ‘Gracias a este nuevo volumen que nos ofrece la Modern Humanities Research Association, el público de habla inglesa tendrá la oportunidad de adentrarse en el universo valleinclaniano, disfrutar de la lectura de las Comedias bárbaras, y valorar las importantes contribuciones hechas por Valle-Inclán a la literatura española y al teatro modernista europeo.’ — Mercedes Tasende, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 99, 2022, 915-16
- ‘Colbath and González explain that in translating the three texts their principal aim was to “be faithful first and foremost to the uncanny and beautiful atmospheres conjured up in the text” (16) and their success in this endeavor is to be applauded. Noting Valle-Inclán’s rich polyphonic style, they point to the texts’ abrupt transitions among discursive registers: colloquialisms shift into courtly language which then shifts into archaic diction. Colbath and González handle these linguistic challenges deftly, producing a translation that is both readable and protective of the linguistic diversity of the original. Difficult for native speakers of Spanish, Valle-Inclán’s language is very challenging for non-native speakers. Colbath and González’s translation opens up the late nineteenth-century world created by Valle-Inclán to both an English-reading general audience and students interested in Valle-Inclán and his particular take on literary modernism.’ — Elizabeth Drumm, Hispania 106.2, June 2023, 343-44 (full text online)