author
Olive Custance
1874–1944
A poet of the 1890s aesthetic movement, she brought dreamlike beauty and emotional intensity to her verse while moving in the same literary world as The Yellow Book and Oscar Wilde’s circle.
1 Audiobook
The Inn of Dreams
by Olive Custance
About the author
Born in 1874, Olive Custance was an English poet associated with the aesthetic movement and the fin-de-siècle literary scene. She published poetry in the 1890s and contributed to The Yellow Book, building a reputation for richly musical, symbolist-inspired verse. Her best-known books include Opals (1897), Rainbows (1902), and The Blue Bird (1905).
Custance moved in prominent artistic circles and later became known as Lady Alfred Douglas after marrying Lord Alfred Douglas, the poet closely linked to Oscar Wilde’s story. Even so, her work stands on its own for its delicacy, mysticism, and cultivated decadence, and readers interested in the poetry of the Yellow Nineties often find her an especially distinctive voice.
She died in 1944. In recent years, her writing has drawn renewed attention from scholars and readers interested in women poets, queer literary history, and the overlooked figures of the 1890s.