Arthur Symons | Biography

In a letter dated 24 October 1885 to the author James Dykes Campbell, Arthur Symons wrote, "I like always to trace the course of a man's work in the circumstances of his life--to see, when it is possible to do so, how such a result came from such a cause." Symons is known for his work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a translator, playwright, editor, short-story writer, and, most particularly, as a poet. But it was his work as a critic and biographer, tracing the "course of a man's work in the circumstances of his life," that has provided our greatest understanding of fin de siècle literature, particularly in the case of the French symbolists such as Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine. Though Symons suffered a severe mental breakdown in 1908 which greatly affected the coherence of his future literary output, his body of work remains...
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