Imaginary Portraits
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Students of English and American literature who need to understand aestheticist prose
- Readers who enjoy close reading of English prose and savoring style
- Readers interested in nineteenth-century European art and intellectual history
- Writers seeking models for essay structure and the creation of imagery
Not a good fit for
- General fiction readers who prefer strong plots and fast-paced narrative
- Beginners with limited English reading experience who need annotated support
- Readers seeking a systematic textbook of aesthetic theory
Reading tips
- Learn the basic tenets of Pater and aestheticism first, then read the text—this makes his intentions easier to grasp.
- Read each piece closely on its own, then summarize the figures and themes in your own words; there is no need to finish it in one sitting.
- Mark recurring images and keywords, and observe how the author conveys ideas through detail.
- Read alongside an anthology of nineteenth-century English essays to compare Pater's style with other essayists.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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About the author
Walter Pater (1839–1894) was an English essayist and literary critic, and the theoretical representative of the Aesthetic movement. Born in London, he taught for many years at Brasenose College, Oxford. His Studies in the History of the Renaissance, published in 1873, set out the doctrine of art for art's sake, stressing the transience of aesthetic experience and the intensity of individual sensation. He also wrote the philosophical novel Marius the Epicurean and Imaginary Portraits, as well as Appreciations and Plato and Platonism. His refined, suggestive and musical prose exerted a profound influence on Oscar Wilde and later writers. The collection holds 14 of his works.
