Walter Pater

Pater's graceful essays discuss the achievements of Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and other artists. included is his celebrated discussion of the Mona Lisa in a study of Da Vinci. This book concludes with an uncompromising advocacy of hedonism, urging readers to experience life as fully as possible. His cry of "art for art's sake" became the manifesto of the Aesthetic Movement, and his assessments of Renaissance art have influenced generations...

Published in 1887, Imaginary Portraits consists of four studies of fictional characters in historical settings. They are notable not only as illustrations of Pater's aesthetic theories but as influential works of literature. The characters include "A Prince of Court Painters," set in Valenciennes in 1701, "Denys L'Auxerrois," from a French town called Auxerre, "Sebastian van Storck," a young man from Holland during its push for independence, and...

This collection of essays on ancient Greek mythology, art, and culture was posthumously published in 1895. The contents are "A Study of Dionysus: Spiritual Form of Fire and Dew," "The Bacchanals of Euripides," "The Myth of Demeter and Persephone," "Hippolytus Veiled: A Study From Euripides," "The Beginnings of Greek Sculpture," and "The Marbles of Aegina."

This novel is a practical guide through different philosophical teachings. A reader learns them by life examples of Marius's fictional personality, whose life sets him in other circumstances to test his changing beliefs. The story is based in Rome, where Greek philosophy and early Christianity live beside. A typical citizen could be closely familiar with Plato, Socrates, Epicurus, or Aristippus. A series of life events, the loss of a mother, studying...

Originally published in 1878, this semi-autobiographical sketch by the eminent Victorian critic pioneered a new genre of writing: eschewing dialogue and traditional plotline, it is an impressionistic psychological portrait of a young man named Florian Deleal. It evokes the sights and sounds of the author's philistine childhood home.

This posthumous 1895 collection brings together, from many different journals and magazines, Pater's influential and wide-ranging writings. The contents include "Prosper Mérimée," "Raphael," "Pascal," "Art Notes in Northern Italy," "Notre-Dame d'Amiens," "Vézelay," "Apollo in Picardy," "The Child in the House," "Emerald Uthwart," and one of his earliest essays, "Diaphaneité," a meditation on the sensual and the moral.