The Angels of Perversity

The stories in The Angels of Perversity are key examples of early Symbolist prose shaped and inspired by the French Decadent consciousness and must rank among the best short stories of the 1890s.The tone of the stories is unique, with an unusual mixture of decadence and eroticism, balanced by an ironic and sentimental view of the world. About the Author Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915) came from an aristocratic Normandy family which had fallen on hard times. He abandoned his law studies & obtained a badly paid job at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris in 1884 which he lost in 1891 for writing an article Le Joujou-Patriotisme (Patriotism, a toy) for the magazine Mercure de France and became a full-time writer. de Gourmont is considered as one of the finest critics associated with the Symbolist movement. The stories collected together under the title The Angels of Perversity are case studies of sexual attraction.