The eighteen nineties : a review of art and ideas at the close of the nineteenth century

A lively, illustrated survey walks listeners through the final decade of the nineteenth century, charting how British art and literature pulsed with the restless energy of the fin‑de‑siècle. The author sketches the cultural climate without getting lost in jargon, weaving in just enough continental context to show how ideas traveled across France, Germany and beyond. Rich black‑and‑white plates of Aubrey Beardsley, William Morris and other designers give the narrative a vivid visual edge.

The chapters move from the broad sweep of decadence to focused portraits of figures such as Oscar Wilde in his later phase, the flamboyant “new dandyism,” and the rise of the modern short story. Readers meet the “incomparable” Max Beerbohm, encounter the early stirrings of British Impressionism, and hear about the revival of fine printing that reshaped how books looked and felt. By linking personalities with the underlying currents, the study shows how each trend fed into the next.

In addition to the literary giants—Wilde, Kipling, Housman—the book touches on lesser‑known poets and critics, offering a balanced map of an era on the brink of modernity. Listeners come away with a clearer sense of how the artistic experiments of the 1890s set the stage for the twentieth‑century transformations that followed.