‘Then in 1900 everybody got down off his stilts; henceforth nobody drank absinthe with his black coffee; nobody went mad; nobody committed suicide; nobody joined the Catholic Church; or if they did I have forgotten.’
So said W.B. Yeats in 1936, looking back at what he termed ‘the tragic generation’, the writers and artists he had known forty years earlier. His claim is a handy checklist of decadent attributes, but its rhetorical panache disguises the creative achievements and human tragedies of that time.
This talk examines the ways in which madness shaped and haunted English decadence during the 1890s and afterwards, looking at such intriguing characters such as the poets John Barlas and Arthur Symons, and the painter Charles Conder, all of whom experienced incarceration in asylums. It will investigate why madness seems to be so central to the decadent world-view and considers some of the ways in which iit continues to shape our response to creative visionaries.
About the Speaker
Nick Freeman teaches English at Loughborough University. He has published widely on decadence, the supernatural and the occult and has also edited a selection of A.M. Burrage’s ghost stories for the British Library’s Gilded Nightmares series.
Your curator and host for this event will be the author Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Ghostland (William Collins, 2019), a work of narrative non-fiction, is a moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – as well as the author’s own haunted past; it was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley 2020 prize, an award given to a literary autobiography of excellence. Edward’s first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. His latest book is All the Fear of the Fair (pub. Oct 2025) for the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com
Don’t worry if you can’t make the live event on the night – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day.
[Image: An absinthe addict eyeing three glasses on a table; advertisement for film Absinthe. Colour lithograph, ca. 1913. Source: Wellcome Collection.]
