FEASTING WITH PANTHERS, A NEW CONSIDERATION OF SOME LATE VICTORIAN WRITERS

by Rupert Croft-Cooke

Victorians under consideration are Oscar Wilde, John Addington Symonds, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Ernest Dowson, Edmond Gosse, Walt Whitman, Walter Pater, Edward Fitzgerald, Count Stenbock, Aubrey Beardsley, Lewis Carroll, and Edward Lear. 309 pages..

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Rupert Croft-Cooke was an English writer. He was a prolific creator of fiction and non-fiction, including screenplays and biographies under his own name and detective stories under the pseudonym of Leo Bruce.

Reviews

[Michael Wailes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed this book despite not being particularly interested in Swinburne and only mildly interested in Symonds. I mainly bought it for the section on Wilde and the English decadents, but ended up going back and reading it all.

Rupert Croft-Cooke is a great guide to the peccadilloes of various Victorian writers. By turns insightful, judgemental, sympathetic, waspish and occasionally very funny, it is very much a book of its time, written before but published the year homosexuality was decriminalised in the UK. Croft-Cooke clearly has a personal interest in Symonds and especially Wilde having himself spent six months in prison in the 1950s for engaging in ‘acts of indecency’ with two navy cooks.

[Osiris Oliphant]

chapters-

Swinburne and le vice Anglais -- Swinburne and the Pre-Raphaelites ; Swinburne, Lord Houghton and Simeon Solomon ; Swinburne, Howell and Powell ; Swinburne, Menken, Gosse and Watts-Dunton -- John Addington Symonds and the Greek ideal -- Symonds and five schoolmasters ; Symonds, Roden Noel, Walt Whitman and Edward Fitzgerald ; Symonds, Edward Cracroft Lefroy, Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll -- Oscar Wilde and the iron lilies -- Wilde and Walter Pater ; Wilde, Gray and Raffalovich ; Wilde, Lionel Johnson, Ernest Dowson and Count Stenbock ; Wilde before the trials ; Wilde, the aftermath

[Guy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful writing, though much of the poetry, Latin, and French were above my intellectual level and I did need to look up even a few of the adjectives in the main text. This refreshing approach of considering the motivation and history of classic artists to better understand their work was written decades ago, yet sounds progressive compared to today's right-wing hysteria over drag queen storytime and trans people.

[Rickard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is so interesting. If you are interested in Oscar Wilde, then this book is a must.