Hubert Crackanthorpe

<p>Hubert Crackanthorpe (1870-1896) made a critically significant contribution to the evolution of the modernist short story in Britain. His unexplained death in Paris at the age of 26 cut short a highly promising literary career. </p><p><br></p><p>The striking realism of Crackanthorpe's first collection of short stories <em>Wreckage</em> (1893) followed by the psychologically complex <em>Sentimental Studies</em> and posthumous <em>Last Studies</em> (1896) together with the prose poems of <em>Vignettes</em> (1896) were much admired by Henry James and his contemporaries Dowson Johnson and Symons as the work of a leading innovative writer of critical Decadence.  Indeed his stories combine an unrelenting realism with a conscious aestheticizing of their often troubling bleak subject matter.</p><p><br></p><p>As co-editor of the short-lived periodical <em>The Albermarle </em>and campaigning literary journalist Crackanthorpe was a key critical participant in central literary and artistic debates of the early 1890s:  'facts' versus 'effects' in literature; the efficacy of realism/naturalism; questions of taste 'reticence' and the handling of controversial subject matter.</p><p><br></p><p>This fully annotated critical text comprises the most extensive collection to date of Crackanthorpe's writing. As well as uncollected stories the volume includes a short story never previously published in book form. This edition also contains a selection of Crackanthorpe's critical writings and a bibliographical survey of his work. </p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>