The Works of Walter Pater

Walter Pater (1839–94) was the foremost Victorian writer on art and aesthetic experience. He brought his knowledge of the history of art to bear on the new problem of how to explain the very personal affective response to beauty, and raised this into a central concern of aesthetic and philosophical thought. His ideas still shape modern assumptions about our response to art. This edition of Pater's complete works was published in 1900–1 in a limited edition of 775 copies. It comprises eight volumes of his major works with an additional volume of essays first published in The Guardian. This volume reissues Pater's magazine articles along with his early essay 'Diaphanitè', a work that had been controversial for its homoerotic subtext. The collection was first published in 1895 as part of his literary executor C. L. Shadwell's aim to promote Pater's work. This version includes a chronology of Pater's writings.