Edgar Saltus was one of the great decadent writers of the United States-possibly the greatest. Set amidst glamourous Gilded Age New York, his fiction tells of the secret cruelties and obsessions eating away at the souls of socialites, businessmen and artists alike, as increasing wealth and opulence only drive them further from reality in their quest for stimulation. Inspired by eastern mysticism and the philosophy of Arthur -Schopenhauer, Saltus makes mock of the human tendency to interpret the world according to our desires, and the great disillusionment which often follows when this perception conflicts with reality.

The Princess of the Sun and Other Decadent Stories collects together a selection of Edgar Saltus’s brilliant tales from newspapers, books and unpublished manuscripts; alternating between Poesque mysteries, sardonic society romances, and tales of decay and delirium, these pieces show their author as a masterful practitioner of the conte cruel, executed in an epigrammatic style so refined that one critic even asserted that style is a synonym for Saltus.