Walter Pater

'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.