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John Barlas (1860 –1914) was one of the key figures of the 1890s poetry landscape and, through his writings, was responsible for introducing and popularizing forms of Decadence and Aestheticism. However, unlike his better-known contemporaries such as Oscar Wilde, Ernest Dowson, and Arthur Symons, many of whom admired his work, today Barlas languishes forgotten and is barely remembered.
This new selection – including poems which have been unavailable for many years – showcases the best of Barlas across his meteoric career and reveals him to be a poet who anticipated the moods of Decadence and Aestheticism which were to form such an important part of the 1890s cultural landscape. His sonnet sequences in particular mark him out as a master of the miniature form and a number of his shorter poems rank as amongst the best of the time. It is only perhaps his subsequent mental illness and confinement in a Glasgow asylum that has prevented Barlas's works being better known and receiving the critical attention they deserve.
About the author:
John Howlett is a Lecturer in Education at Keele University. He writes not only on the history of education and schooling but also nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry, a field in which he has edited a number of critical editions including James Reeves: Selected Poems (Greenwich Exchange, 2021) and Every Voice: Selected Poems of Leonard Clark (Greenwich Exchange, 2024).
ISBN 9781910996881
pages: 277
John Barlas (1860 –1914) was one of the key figures of the 1890s poetry landscape and, through his writings, was responsible for introducing and popularizing forms of Decadence and Aestheticism. However, unlike his better-known contemporaries such as Oscar Wilde, Ernest Dowson, and Arthur Symons, many of whom admired his work, today Barlas languishes forgotten and is barely remembered.
This new selection – including poems which have been unavailable for many years – showcases the best of Barlas across his meteoric career and reveals him to be a poet who anticipated the moods of Decadence and Aestheticism which were to form such an important part of the 1890s cultural landscape. His sonnet sequences in particular mark him out as a master of the miniature form and a number of his shorter poems rank as amongst the best of the time. It is only perhaps his subsequent mental illness and confinement in a Glasgow asylum that has prevented Barlas's works being better known and receiving the critical attention they deserve.
About the author:
John Howlett is a Lecturer in Education at Keele University. He writes not only on the history of education and schooling but also nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry, a field in which he has edited a number of critical editions including James Reeves: Selected Poems (Greenwich Exchange, 2021) and Every Voice: Selected Poems of Leonard Clark (Greenwich Exchange, 2024).
ISBN 9781910996881
pages: 277