Ernest Dowson Collected Poems

No account of decadence or the English 1890s can ignore the poetry of Ernest Dowson. Although his body of verse is fairly slender - less than 120 poems in total, along with a small verse play and the translation of Voltaire's scurrilous mock-epic - the elegance and musicality of his poetry make it remain in the mind, and it has always attracted not only a wide audience of poetry lovers but also poets themselves. Eliot, Yeats, Pound have felt the influence of his lyrical cadences, and...
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No account of decadence or the English 1890s can ignore the poetry of Ernest Dowson. Although his body of verse is fairly slender - less than 120 poems in total, along with a small verse play and the translation of Voltaire's scurrilous mock-epic - the elegance and musicality of his poetry make it remain in the mind, and it has always attracted not only a wide audience of poetry lovers but also poets themselves. Eliot, Yeats, Pound have felt the influence of his lyrical cadences, and phrases from Dowson like 'I have been true to you in my fashion', or 'the days of wine and roses' have been heard widely by audiences who never heard of Dowson.
This edition includes all of Dowson's known poems. It describes in detail the contents of his manuscript notebook and re-transcribes the poems from it; it includes his two published volumes, 'Verses' (1896) and 'Decorations' (1899), his verse play 'The Pierrot of the Minute', the discrete independent parts of his verse translation of Voltaire, and a few uncollected pieces. All have been checked where possible against the original manuscripts and annotated to provide explanation and context. There is a select bibliography and an index of titles and first lines.