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Tags: decadence

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  The Picture of Dorian Gray

  by Oscar Wilde

  Oscar Wilde brings his enormous gifts for astute social observation and sparkling prose to The Picture of Dorian Gray , his dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. This dandy, who remains forever unchanged—petulant, hedonistic, vain, and amoral—while a painting of him ages and grows increasingly hideous with the years, has been horrifying, enchanting, obsessing, even... (more)
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  Against Nature

  by Joris-Karl Huysmans

  A wildly original fin-de-siècle novel, Against Nature follows its sole character, Des Esseintes, a decadent, ailing aristocrat who retreats to an isolated villa where he indulges his taste for luxury and excess. Veering between nervous excitability and debilitating ennui, he gluts his aesthetic appetites with classical literature and art, exotic jewels (with which he fatally encrusts the shell of his tortoise),... (more)
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  Glamorama

  by Bret Easton Ellis

  "Arguably the novel of the 1990s... Glamorama should establish Ellis as the most fearless and ambitious writer of his generation...A must read." -- The Seattle Times The author of American Psycho and Less Than Zero continues to shock and haunt us with his incisive and brilliant dissection of the modern world. In his most ambitious and gripping book yet, Bret Easton Ellis takes our celebrity obsessed... (more)
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  The Informers

  by Bret Easton Ellis

  This powerful and poignant novel of L.A., from the author of Less Than Zero and American Psycho, depicts a generation's overwhelming dissatisfaction with the way things are, and its insistence on remaining as detached and isolated as possible.
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  Les Fleurs du Mal

  by Charles Baudelaire

  Landmark modernist verse with themes relating to decadence and eroticism. Cursed poet and his malicious words in years when world still wasn't prepared for such lines.
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  Death in Venice

  by Thomas Mann

  The world-famous masterpiece by Nobel laureate Thomas Mann. Published on the eve of World War I, a decade after Buddenbrooks had established Thomas Mann as a literary celebrity, Death in Venice tells the story of Gustav von Aschenbach, a successful but aging writer who follows his wanderlust to Venice in search of spiritual fulfillment that instead leads to his erotic doom. In the decaying city, besieged by... (more)
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  Story of the Eye

  by Georges Bataille

  Puede decirse sin temor que Historia del ojo es la obra maestra de la literatura erótica.En ella confluyen, por un lado, la mejor prosa en clave surrealista de este gran novelista, ensayista y poeta francés y, por otro, la esencia de su obsesiva preocupación por el sexo, la muerte y la fe -su fe- que configura, en realidad, gran parte de su obra.Partiendo de un proceso creativo muy querido de... (more)
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  Venus in Furs

  by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

  Severin is a young Galician nobleman with a secret; he can only love a woman with a ruthless heart, who will rain her whip upon him in a shower of bloody kisses. When he meets Wanda, the wealthy and beautiful widow living in the apartment upstairs, he wonders if she might be the one to help him realize his darkest desires. But Wanda is better than she ever dreamed possible at domination—and soon Severin realizes... (more)
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  La Bas (Down There)

  by Joris-Karl Huysmans

  At the novel’s center is Durtal, a writer obsessed with the life of one of the blackest figures in history, Gilles de Rais—child murderer, sadist, necrophile and practitioner of all the black arts. The book’s authentic, extraordinarily detailed descriptions of the Black Mass have never been surpassed.
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  The 120 Days of Sodom

  And Other Writings

  by Marquis de Sade

  The Marquis de Sade, vilified by respectable society from his own time through ours, apotheosized by Apollinaire as "the freest spirit that has yet existed," wrote The 120 Days of Sodom while imprisoned in the Bastille. An exhaustive catalogue of sexual aberrations and the first systematic exploration-a hundred years before Krafft-Ebing and Freud-of the psychology of sex, it is considered Sade's crowning... (more)
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  Vathek

  by William Beckford

  Written in 1782 by the near-legendary hedonist William Beckford, Vathek was the first Oriental-Gothic horror novel in English literature. It tells the story of Vathek, the debauched and pleasure-seeking ninth Caliph of the Abassides, who decides to build a great tower to "penetrate the secrets of heaven." The appearance of an Indian magician arouses Vathek’s thirst for knowledge and he is willing to go to any... (more)
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  The Flowers of Evil

  by Charles Baudelaire

  The French poetry in this book was important in the symbolist and modernist movements, dealing with themes related to decadence and eroticism.
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  Norton Critical Edition

  The Picture of Dorian Gray (Norton Critical Edition)

  by Oscar Wilde

  This Norton Critical Edition is the only edition available that includes both the 1890 Lippincott’s and the 1891 book versions of The Picture of Dorian Gray , allowing students to compare the two published versions with the editorial guidance of Michael Patrick Gillespie. “Backgrounds” and “Reviews and Reactions” allow readers to gauge the novel’s sensational reception and to consider the heated public... (more)
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  Manon Lescaut

  by Abbe Prevost

  The sweetness of her glance, or rather my evil star already in its ascendant and drawing me to my ruin, did not allow me to hesitate for a moment. So begins the story of Manon Lescaut, a tale of passion and betrayal, of delinquency and misalliance, which moves from early eighteenth-century Paris--with its theatres, assemblies, and gaming-houses-via prison and deportation to a tragic denouement in the treeless... (more)
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  Satyricon

  by Gaius Petronius

  Perhaps the strangest and most strikingly modern work to survive from the ancient world, The Satyricon relates the hilarious mock epic adventures of the impotent Encolpius, and his struggle to regain virility. Here Petronius brilliantly brings to life the courtesans, legacy-hunters, pompous professors and dissolute priestesses of the age and, above all, Trimalchio, the archetypal self-made millionaire whose... (more)
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  The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings

  by Oscar Wilde

  ENDURING LITERATURE ILLUMINATED BY PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIP The classic Gothic tale of horror that explores the pleasures and dangers of a life of decadence. EACH ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES: • A concise introduction that gives readers important background information • A chronology of the author's life and work • A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context • An outline of... (more)
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  Petty Demon

  by Fyodor Sologub

  The Petty Demon is one of the funniest Russian novels ever written. It is also the most decadent of the great Russian classics, replete with naked boys, sinuous girls, and a strange mixture of beauty and perversity. The main character, Peredonov, is as comical as he is disgusting—at once a victim, a monster, a silly hypocrite, and a sadistic dullard. The plot moves from Peredonov’s petty quest for a promotion... (more)
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  The Simple Art of Perfect Baking

  by Flo Braker

  For those in the know, The Simple Art of Perfect Baking is a must-have cookbook, a kitchen classic. Now back in print with a durable hardcover - it's a book that gets turned to again and again - this handsome edition with all-new color photographs is ready to advise the next generation of bakers. Flo Braker's meticulously tested recipes give home cooks the confidence they need to create light-as-air cakes, fluffy... (more)
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  The Dedalus Book of German Decadence: Voices of the Abyss (Decadence from Dedalus)

  anthology: Sacher-Masoch to Thomas Mann
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  The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber: Weimar Berlin's Priestess of Depravity

  by Mel Gordon

  The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber is the first contemporary biography of a notorious actor/dancer/poet/playwright who scandalized sex-obsessed Weimar Berlin during the 1920s. In an era where everything was permitted, Anita Berber's celebrations of "Depravity, Horror and Ecstasy" were condemned and censored. She often haunted Weimar Berlin's hotel lobbies, nightclubs and casinos,... (more)