The Fin de Si`ecle A Reader in Cultural History, c.1880-1900

The fin-de-siecle 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 games, 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-siecle years. Each section begins with an Introduction and closes with Editorial Notes that carefully situate individual texts within a wider cultural landscape.

In an important contribution to the developing field of interdisciplinary studies in the Humanities, Ledger and Luckhurst make available to students and scholars 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 which carefully situate individual texts within a wider cultural landscape.

1 - Degeneration: A Chapter in Darwinism (1880)
2 - 'Zoological Retrogression' (1891)
3 - Degeneration (1895)
4 - Regeneration: A Reply to Max Nordau (1895)
6 - The Sanity of Art: An Exposure of the Current Nonsense about Artists being Degenerate (1895/1908)
1 - The Bitter Cry of Outcast London (1883)
2 - The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon (1885)
4 - In Darkest England - and the Way Out (1890)
1 - 'The Mind of Crowds', The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)
2 - The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903)
3 - At the Alhambra: Impressions and Sensations (1896)
4 - Why We Attacked the Empire (1895)
1 - Marriage (1888)
3 - Why Women are Ceasing to Marry (1899)
4 - The New Aspect of the Woman Question (1894)
5 - Plain Words on the Woman Question (1889)
6 - The New Woman in Fiction and Fact (1894)
7 - An Appeal Against Female Suffrage (1889)
8 - Female Suffrage: A Reply (1889)
1 - Realism and Romance (1886)
2 - The Decadent Movement in Literature (1893)
3 - Candour in English Fiction (1890)
4 - Tommyrotics (1895)
5 - Editorial Comment, Daily Telegraph (March 14, 1891)
6 - Henrik Ibsen (1889)
1 - The Expansion of England (1883)
2 - The True Conception of Empire (1897)
3 - speech at Drill Hall, Cape Town (July 18, 1899)
4 - General Gordon, The Illustrated London News (Feb 14, 1885)
5 - Ten Years Captivity in the Mahdi's Camp 1882-92 (1893)
6 - The Battle of Omdurman, With Kitchener to Khartum (1898)
7 - Relief of Mafeking and London's Roar of Jubilation, Daily Mail (May 19, 1900)
8 - Affairs on the Upper Congo, The Times (May 14, 1897)
9 - Bloody Niggers (1897)
10 - An English South African's View of the Situation (1899)
11 - Imperialism: A Study (1902)
12 - The Story of the Congo Free State (1920)
1 - How We Live and How We might Live (1887)
2 - The Economic Basis of Socialism (1889)
3 - The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
4 - Women and Socialism (1907)
1 - Words of a Rebel (1885)
2 - Anarchy (1888)
3 - Letter to Commonweal (May 18, 1889)
6 - Anarchism: What it Really Stands for (1911)
1 - On the Physical Basis of Life (1870)
2 - On the Aims and Instruments of Scientific Thought (1872)
3 - Belfast Address, British Association (1874)
4 - A Grammar of Science (1892)
5 - Evolution and Ethics (1893)
1 - Hysteria, Dictionary of Psychological Medicine (1893)
2 - On the Psychical Mechanism of hysterical phenomena (1893)
3 - The Subliminal Consciousness (1891)
4 - The Stream of Thought, The Principles of Psychology (1890)
5 - Nervous Diseases and Modern Life (1895)
2 - Address of the President at the First General Meeting (1882)
3 - Psychical Research, Pall Mall Gazette (Oct 21, 1882)
4 - Thought-Reading (1882)
5 - How We intend to Study Borderland (1893)
6 - My Experience of Automatic Writing (1893)
7 - Ghosts up to Date (1894)
1 - Nymphomania in Dictionary of Psychological Medicine (1893)
2 - Psychopathia Sexualis (1886)
3 - The Intermediate Sex (1894/1906)
4 - A Problem in Modern Ethics, being an inquiry into the phenomenon of Sexual Inversion, Addressed especially to medical psychologists and jurists (1896)
1 - The Culture of Science, Primitive Culture (1871)
2 - The Primitive Man - Physical, The Primitive Man - Emotional, The Primitive Man - Intellectual, The Principles of Sociology (1876)
3 - National Life from the Standpoint of Science (1900)
4 - Eugenics: its definition, scope and aims (1903)
5 - The Clash of Cultures, West African Studies (1899)
6 - Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits (volume II): Preface by A. C. Haddon and Introduction by W. H. R. Rivers (1901)

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