Femmes de Siècle - Joan Smith The phrase fin de siècle conjures up the intense, troubled atmosphere of the final years of the nineteenth century a decade famous for the trial of Oscar Wilde, the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, and the artistic and literary movement known as decadence. The leading lights in that movement were men, the dominant notes cynical and pessimistic. But what about the women of the period? Femmes de Siècle brings together some of the most original writing by women from the 1890s, and includes many stories from The Yellow Book, the most controversial publication of the period. Stories by Ada Leverson, George Egerton, Edith Wharton, Olive Schreiner, Ella D'Arcy, and Charlotte Mew -whose story 'Passed', reprinted here, caused a sensation in 1894-appear alongside work by neglected authors such as Evelyn Sharp, Mrs Murray Hickson, Netta Syrett and Frances E. Huntley in a panorama of women's ambitions and anxieties at the turn of the century. But what about our own fin de siècle, the threshold of not only a new century, but a new millennium? Femmes de Siècle presents some of the most talented women writing today: Helen Simpson, Alice Thomas Ellis, Emily Prager, Lynne Truss, Brigid Brophy, Claire Harman, Elizabeth Jolley, Shena Mackay, Candia McWilliam and Moy McCrory. They reflect on endings and beginnings, on men and women, and on contemporary dilemmas. Femmes de Siècle allows two groups of women to speak for themselves, and provides vivid portraits of two challenging, contrasting periods. Good quality paperback with dust jacket Gift inscription in front Beginnings of foxing