Edited by Sam Kunkel and Jessica Gossling
£18.99 / £35
Unlimited paperback & limited hardback edition of 300.
256pp. | 133 x 203mm
45 BW Illustrations
ISBN 9781917674041
Available August 2025
All hardback copies will come with two postcards featuring illustrations found in the book.
From the Golden Fly to the Wounded Lion, over 40 animal tales of decadence, mystery, and the uncanny.
An original, sumptuously illustrated collection of fin-de siècle animal stories and poems, selected, translated, and introduced by Jessica Gossling and Sam Kunkel. Bringing together works by forty writers including Michael Field, Remy de Gourmont, Lafcadio Hearn, J.-K. Huysmans, Rachilde, and Eric Count Stenbock, this timely anthology explores the inexorable connection between human and animal, from the lion to the ant.
Bringing together tales both familiar and largely unknown, some of them translated into English for the first time, The Decadent Bestiary opens a new chapter in the complex story of our relationship with the natural world, showcasing the beasts of beauty and burden that recur in decadent and symbolist writing.
Featuring stories and poems from:
Victor Hugo, Renée Vivien, Aleister Crowley, Iwan Gilkin, Guy de Maupassant, H. P. Lovecraft, Charles Baudelaire, Stanislas de Guaïta, Saki, Hector Chainaye, Jules Renard, Olive Custance, Gustave Kahn, Maurice Maeterlinck, William Sharp, Oscar Wilde, Catulle Mendès, D. G. Rossetti, Max Beerbohm, Eric Stenbock, Rosamund Marriott Watson, Remy de Gourmont, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Stéphane Mallarmé, W. B. Yeats, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Jules Laforgue, John Todhunter, Michael Field, Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Rachilde, Jules Renard, E. F. Benson, Emily Pfeiffer, Olive Schreiner, Algernon Blackwood, John Byrne Leicester Warren, Marcel Schwob, Lafcadio Hearn, Léon Bloy.
