'We read Pater', says Dr Fletcher, in his most perceptive study, 'not because we expect to be dominated by him, but because we enjoy being surprised by him.' He adds: 'He has created himself for us in his oeuvre as a permanently significant symbolical figure: the most complete example, the least trivial, of the aesthetic man.'

Dr Ian Fletcher is a Reader in English Literature at the University of Reading. His publications include an edition of The Collected Poems of Lionel Johnson, Romantic Mythologies, a volume of essays, and various essays on W. B. Yeats and his circle.