Walter Pater

Walter Horatio Pater (4 August 1839 30 July 1894) 2.1 The Renaissance
was an English essayist, literary and art critic, and writer
of ction.
The opportunities for wider study and teaching at Oxford,
combined with formative visits to the Continent in 1865
he visited Florence, Pisa and Ravenna meant that Pa1 Early life
ters preoccupations now multiplied. He became acutely
interested in art and literature, and started to write arBorn in Stepney in Londons East End, Walter Pater was ticles and criticism. First to be printed was an essay on
the second son of Richard Glode Pater, a physician who the metaphysics of Coleridge, 'Coleridges Writings, conhad moved to London in the early 19th century to practice tributed anonymously in 1866 to the Westminster Review.
medicine among the poor. Dr Pater died while Walter A few months later his essay on Winckelmann (1867), an
was an infant and the family moved to Eneld, London. early expression of his intellectual and artistic idealism,
Walter attended Eneld Grammar School and was indi- appeared in the same review, followed by 'The Poems
of William Morris' (1868), expressing his admiration for
vidually tutored by the headmaster.
romanticism. In the following years the Fortnightly ReIn 1853, he was sent to The Kings School, Canterbury, view printed his essays on Leonardo da Vinci (1869),
where the beauty of the cathedral made an impression Sandro Botticelli (1870), and Michelangelo (1871). The
that would remain with him all his life. He was four- last three, with other similar pieces, were collected in his
teen when his mother, Maria Pater, died in 1854. As Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), renamed
a schoolboy Pater read John Ruskin's Modern Painters, in the second and later editions The Renaissance: Studwhich helped inspire his lifelong attraction to the study ies in Art and Poetry. The Leonardo essay contains Paof art and gave him a taste for well-crafted prose. He ters celebrated reverie on the Mona Lisa[4] (probably
gained a school exhibition, with which he proceeded in still the most famous piece of writing about any picture in
1858 to Queens College, Oxford.[1]
the world[5] ); the Botticelli essay was the rst in English
As an undergraduate, Pater was a reading man, with lit- on this painter, contributing to the revival of interest in
erary and philosophical interests beyond the prescribed this artist.[6] An essay on 'The School of Giorgione' (Forttexts. Flaubert, Gautier, Baudelaire and Swinburne were nightly Review, 1877), added to the third edition (1888),
among his early favourites. Visiting his aunt and sisters contains Paters much-quoted maxim "All art constantly
in Germany during the vacations, he learned German and aspires towards the condition of music" (i.e. the arts seek
began to read Hegel and the German philosophers.[2] The to unify subject-matter and form, and music is the only
scholar Benjamin Jowett was struck by his potential and art in which subject and form are seemingly one). The
oered to give him private lessons. In Jowetts classes, nal paragraphs of the 1868 William Morris essay were
however, Pater was a disappointment; he took a Second reworked as the books 'Conclusion'.
in literae humaniores in 1862. As a boy Pater had cher- This brief 'Conclusion' was to be Paters most inuential
ished the idea of entering the Anglican Church, but at and controversial[7] publication. It asserts that our physOxford his faith in Christianity had been shaken. In spite ical lives are made up of scientic processes and elemenof his inclination towards the ritual and aesthetic elements tal forces in perpetual motion, renewed from moment
of the church, he had little interest in Christian doctrine to moment but parting sooner or later on their ways.
and did not pursue ordination. After graduating, Pater In the mind the whirlpool is still more rapid": a drift
remained in Oxford and taught Classics and Philosophy of perceptions, feelings, thoughts and memories, reduced
to private students. His years of study and reading now to impressions unstable, ickering, inconstant, ringed
paid dividends: he was oered a classical fellowship in round for each one of us by that thick wall of personality";
1864 at Brasenose on the strength of his ability to teach and with the passage and dissolution of impressions...
modern German philosophy,[3] and he settled down to a [there is a] continual vanishing away, that strange, peruniversity career.
petual weaving and unweaving of ourselves. Since all is
in ux, to get the most from life we must learn to discriminate through sharp and eager observation": for

Career and writings

Through such discrimination we may get as many pulsations as possible into the given time": To burn al1

2 CAREER AND WRITINGS

ways with this hard, gem-like ame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. Forming habits means failure on
our part, for habit connotes the stereotypical. While all
melts under our feet, Pater wrote, we may well catch
at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free
for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, or work of
the artists hands. Not to discriminate every moment
some passionate attitude in those about us in the brilliancy of their gifts is, on this short day of frost and sun,
to sleep before evening. The resulting quickened, multiplied consciousness counters our insecurity in the face
of the ux.[8] Moments of vision may come from simple
natural eects, as Pater notes elsewhere in the book: A
sudden light transgures a trivial thing, a weathervane, a
windmill, a winnowing ail, the dust in the barn door; a
moment and the thing has vanished, because it was pure
eect; but it leaves a relish behind it, a longing that the accident may happen again.[9] Or they may come from intellectual excitement, from philosophy, science and the
arts. Here we should be for ever testing new opinions,
never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy"; and of these, a
passion for the arts, a desire of beauty, has (in the summary of one of Paters editors[10] ) the greatest potential
for staving o the sense of transience, because in the arts
the perceptions of highly sensitive minds are already ordered; we are confronted with a reality already rened and
we are able to reach the personality behind the work.
The Renaissance, which appeared to some to endorse
amorality and hedonism, provoked criticism from conservative quarters, including disapproval from Paters former tutor at Queens College, from the college chaplain
at Brasenose College and from the Bishop of Oxford.[11]
Margaret Oliphant, reviewing the book in Blackwoods
Magazine, dismissed it as rococo Epicureanism",[12]
while George Eliot condemned it as quite poisonous in
its false principles of criticism and false conceptions of
life.[13] In 1874 Pater was turned down at the last moment by his erstwhile mentor Benjamin Jowett, Master
of Balliol, for a previously-promised proctorship. Letters have recently emerged documenting a romance[14]
with a nineteen-year-old Balliol undergraduate, William
Money Hardinge, who had attracted unfavorable attention as a result of his outspoken homosexuality and blasphemous verse, and who later became a novelist.[14] Many
of Paters works focus on male beauty, friendship and
love, either in a Platonic way or, obliquely, in a more
physical way.[15] Another undergraduate, W. H. Mallock,
had passed the Pater-Hardinge letters to Jowett,[16] who
summoned Pater:

Paters whole nature changed under the strain

(wrote A. C. Benson in his diary) after the
dreadful interview with Jowett. He became
old, crushed, despairing and this dreadful
weight lasted for years; it was years before he
realised that Jowett would not use them.[17]

In 1876 Mallock parodied Paters message in a satirical

novel The New Republic, depicting Pater as a typically
eete English aesthete. The satire appeared during the
competition for the Oxford Professorship of Poetry and
played a role in convincing Pater to remove himself from
consideration. A few months later Pater published what
may have been a subtle riposte: 'A Study of Dionysus'
the outsider-god, persecuted for his new religion of ecstasy, who vanquishes the forces of reaction (The Fortnightly Review, Dec. 1876).[14]

2.2

Marius the Epicurean and Imaginary

Portraits

Walter Pater lived at 2 Bradmore Road in North Oxford (the

right-hand house with a blue plaque) between 1869 and 1885
with his sisters, including Clara Pater, a pioneer of womens
education.[18]

Pater was now at the centre of a small but gifted circle

in Oxford he had tutored Gerard Manley Hopkins in
1866 and the two remained friends till September 1879
when Hopkins left Oxford[19][20] and he was gaining
respect in the London literary world and beyond, numbering some of the Pre-Raphaelites among his friends.
Conscious of his growing inuence and aware that the
'Conclusion' to his Renaissance could be misconstrued as
amoral, he withdrew the essay from the second edition in
1877 (he was to reinstate it with minor modications in
the third in 1888) and now set about clarifying and exemplifying his ideas through ction.
To this end he published in 1878 in Macmillans Magazine
an evocative semi-autobiographical sketch entitled 'Imaginary Portraits 1. The Child in the House', about some of
the formative experiences of his childhood a work,
as Paters earliest biographer put it, which can be recommended to anyone unacquainted with Paters writings,
as exhibiting most fully his characteristic charm.[21] This
was to be the rst of a dozen or so Imaginary Portraits, a
genre and term Pater could be said to have invented and in
which he came to specialise. These are not so much stories plotting is limited and dialogue absent as psychological studies of ctional characters in historical settings,

2.3

Appreciations and Plato and Platonism

often personications of new concepts at turning-points

in the history of ideas or emotion. Some look forward,
dealing with innovation in the visual arts and philosophy;
others look back, dramatising neo-pagan themes. Many
are veiled self-portraits exploring dark personal preoccupations.
Planning a major work, Pater now resigned his teaching
duties in 1882, though he retained his Fellowship and the
college rooms he had occupied since 1864, and made a
research visit to Rome. In his philosophical novel Marius
the Epicurean (1885), an extended imaginary portrait set
in the Rome of the Antonines, which Pater believed had
parallels with his own century, he examines the sensations and ideas of a young Roman of integrity, who
pursues an ideal of the aesthetic life a life based on
, sensation tempered by asceticism. Leaving
behind the religion of his childhood, sampling one philosophy after another, becoming secretary to the Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius, Marius tests his authors theory
of the stimulating eect of the pursuit of sensation and
insight as an ideal in itself. The novels opening and closing episodes betray Paters continuing nostalgia for the atmosphere, ritual and community of the religious faith he
had lost. Marius was favourably reviewed and sold well;
a second edition came out in the same year. For the third Walter Pater lived with his sisters at 12 Earls Terrace, Kensington
(house with blue plaque) between 1885 and 1893.[18]
edition (1892) Pater made extensive stylistic revisions.
In 1885, on the resignation of John Ruskin, Pater became
a candidate for the Slade Professorship of Fine Art at
Oxford University, but though in many ways the strongest
of the eld, he withdrew from the competition, discouraged by continuing hostility in ocial quarters.[22] In the
wake of this disappointment but buoyed by the success
of Marius, he moved with his sisters from North Oxford
(2 Bradmore Road[18] ), their home since 1869, to London (12 Earls Terrace, Kensington), where he was to live
(outside term-time) till 1893 and where he was to enjoy
his status of minor literary celebrity.
From 1885 to 1887, Pater published four new imaginary
portraits in Macmillans Magazine, each set at a turningpoint in the history of ideas or art, and each a study of
mists, men born out of their time, who bring disaster
upon themselves 'A Prince of Court Painters (1885)
(on Watteau and Jean-Baptiste Pater), 'Sebastian van
Storck' (1886) (17th-century Dutch society and painting, and the philosophy of Spinoza), 'Denys L'Auxerrois
(1886) (Dionysus and the medieval cathedral-builders),
and 'Duke Carl of Rosenmold' (1887) (the German Renaissance). These were collected in the volume Imaginary Portraits (1887). Here Paters examination of the
tensions between tradition and innovation, intellect and
sensation, asceticism and aestheticism, social mores and
amorality, becomes increasingly complex. Implied warnings against the pursuit of extremes in matters intellectual,
aesthetic or sensual are unmistakable. The second portrait, 'Sebastian van Storck', a powerful critique of philosophical solipsism, is perhaps Paters most striking work
of ction.

Blue plaque, 12 Earls Terrace, Kensington

2.3

Appreciations and Plato and Platonism

In 1889 Pater published Appreciations, with an Essay on

Style, a collection of previously-printed essays on literature. It was well received. 'Style' (reprinted from the
Fortnightly Review, 1888) is a statement of his creed and
methodology as a prose-writer, ending with the paradox
If style be the man, it will be in a real sense 'impersonal' ". The volume also includes an appraisal of the
poems of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, rst printed in 1883,
a few months after Rossettis death; 'Aesthetic Poetry', a

2 CAREER AND WRITINGS

revised version of the William Morris esssay of 1868 minus its nal paragraphs; and an essay on Thomas Browne,
whose mystical, Baroque style Pater admired. The essay on Coleridge reprints 'Coleridges Writings (1866)
but omits its explicitly anti-Christian passages;[23] it adds
paragraphs on Coleridges poetry that Pater had contributed to T. H. Wards The English Poets (1880). Pater suppressed, however, in the second edition of Appreciations (1890) the essay 'Aesthetic Poetry' evidence of his growing cautiousness in response to establishment criticism.[24] All subsequent reprints of Appreciations have followed the second edition.
In 1893 Pater and his sisters returned to Oxford (64 St
Giles). He was now in demand as a lecturer. In this year
appeared his book Plato and Platonism. Here and in other
essays on ancient Greece Pater relates to Greek culture
the romanticism-classicism dialectic which he had rst
explored in his essay 'Romanticism' (1876), reprinted as
the 'Postscript' to Appreciations. All through Greek history, he writes, we may trace, in every sphere of activity
of the Greek mind, the action of these two opposing tendencies, the centrifugal and centripetal. The centrifugal
the Ionian, the Asiatic tendency ying from the centre,
throwing itself forth in endless play of imagination, delighting in brightness and colour, in beautiful material, in
changeful form everywhere, its restless versatility driving it towards the development of the individual": and
the centripetal tendency, drawing towards the centre,
maintaining the Dorian inuence of a severe simplication everywhere, in society, in culture. Harold Bloom
noted that Pater praises Plato for Classic correctness, for
a conservative centripetal impulse, against his [Paters]
own Heraclitean Romanticism, but we do not believe
him when he presents himself as a centripetal man.[25]
The volume, which also includes a sympathetic study
of ancient Sparta ('Lacedaemon', 1892), was praised by
Jowett.[26] The change that occurs between Marius and
Plato and Platonism, writes Anthony Ward,[27] is one
from a sense of defeat in scepticism to a sense of triumph
in it.
On 30 July 1894, Pater died suddenly in his Oxford home
of heart failure brought on by rheumatic fever, at the age
of 54. He was buried at Holywell Cemetery, Oxford.

2.4

Greek Studies, Miscellaneous Studies

and other posthumous volumes

In 1895, a friend and former student of Paters, Charles

Lancelot Shadwell, a Fellow and later Provost of Oriel,
collected and published as Greek Studies Paters essays on
Greek mythology, religion, art and literature. This volume contains a reverie on the boyhood of Hippolytus,
'Hippolytus Veiled' (rst published in Macmillans Magazine in 1889), which has been called the nest prose
ever inspired by Euripides".[28] The sketch (it is in genre
another 'imaginary portrait') illustrates a paradox central

to Paters sensibility and writings: a leaning towards ascetic beauty apprehended sensuously. The volume also
reprints Paters 1876 'Study of Dionysus.
In the same year Shadwell assembled other uncollected
pieces and published them as Miscellaneous Studies. This
volume contains 'The Child in the House' and another two
obliquely self-revelatory Imaginary Portraits, 'Emerald
Uthwart' (rst published in The New Review in 1892) and
'Apollo in Picardy' (from Harpers Magazine, 1893) the
latter, like 'Denys L'Auxerrois, centring on a peculiarly
Paterian preoccupation: the survival or reincarnation of
pagan deities in the Christian era. Also included were
Paters last (unnished) essay, on Pascal, and two pieces
that point to a revival in Paters nal years of his earlier
interest in Gothic cathedrals, sparked by regular visits to
northern Europe with his sisters.[29] Charles Shadwell in
his younger days had been strikingly handsome, both in
gure and feature,[30] with a face like those to be seen
on the ner Attic coins";[31] he had been the unnamed
inspiration[32] of an unpublished early paper of Paters,
'Diaphaneit' (1864), a tribute to youthful beauty and intellect, the manuscript of which Pater gave to Shadwell.
This piece Shadwell also included in Miscellaneous Studies. Shadwell had accompanied Pater on his 1865 visit to
Italy, and Pater was to dedicate The Renaissance to him
and to write a preface to Shadwells edition of The Purgatory of Dante Alighieri (1892).
In 1896 Shadwell edited and published seven chapters of
Paters unnished novel, Gaston de Latour, set in turbulent late 16th-century France, the product of the authors
interest in French history, philosophy, literature, and art.
Pater had conceived Marius as the rst novel of a trilogy
of works of similar character dealing with the same problems, under altered historical conditions";[33] Gaston was
to have been the second, while the third was to have been
set in England in the late 18th century.[34] In 1995 Gerald Monsman published Gaston de Latour: The Revised
Text, re-editing the seven chapters and editing the remaining six which Shadwell had withheld as too unnished.[35]
Through the imaginary portrait of Gaston and Gastons
historical contemporaries Ronsard, Montaigne, Bruno,
Queen Marguerite, King Henry III Paters fantasia confronts and admonishes the Yellow Nineties, Oscar Wilde
not least.[36] In an 1891 review of The Picture of Dorian
Gray in The Bookman, Pater had disapproved of Wildes
distortion of Epicureanism: A true Epicureanism aims
at a complete though harmonious development of mans
entire organism. To lose the moral sense therefore, for instance the sense of sin and righteousness, as Mr. Wildes
heroes are bent on doing so speedily, as completely as
they can, is ... to become less complex, to pass from a
higher to a lower degree of development.[37]
Essays from The Guardian (a selection of Paters bookreviews) and an Uncollected Essays were privately printed
in 1896 and 1903 respectively (the latter was republished
as Sketches and Reviews in 1919). A Collected Edition
of Paters works, including all but the last volume, was

5
issued in 1901 and was reprinted frequently until the late
1920s.

Inuence

Toward the end of his life Paters writings were exercising

a considerable inuence. The principles of what would be
known as the Aesthetic Movement were partly traceable
to him, and his eect was particularly felt on one of the
movements leading proponents, Oscar Wilde, who paid
tribute to him in The Critic as Artist (1891). Among art
critics inuenced by Pater were Bernard Berenson, Roger
Fry, Kenneth Clark and Richard Wollheim: among early
literary Modernists, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, W. B.
Yeats, Paul Valry, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and Wallace
Stevens;[25] and Paters inuence can be traced in the subjective, stream-of-consciousness novels of the early 20th
century. In literary criticism, Paters emphasis on subjectivity and on the autonomy of the reader helped prepare
the way for the revolutionary approaches to literary studies of the modern era. Among ordinary readers, idealists
have found, and always will nd inspiration in his desire
to burn always with this hard, gemlike ame, in his pursuit of the highest quality in moments as they pass.

Critical method

Paters critical method was outlined in the 'Preface' to

The Renaissance (1873) and rened in his later writings.
In the 'Preface' he argues initially for a subjective, relativist response to life, ideas, art, as opposed to the drier,
more objective, somewhat moralistic criticism practised
by Matthew Arnold and others. The rst step towards
seeing ones object as it really is, Pater wrote, is to
know ones own impression, to discriminate it, to realise
it distinctly. What is this song or picture, this engaging
personality in life or in a book, to me?" When we have
formed our impressions we proceed to nd the power or
forces which produced them, the works virtue. Pater moves, in other words, from eects to causes, which
are his real interest, noted Richard Wollheim.[38] Among
these causes are, pre-eminently, original temperaments
and types of mind; but Pater did not conne himself to
pairing o a work of art with a particular temperament.
Having a particular temperament under review, he would
ask what was the range of forms in which it might nd
expression. Some of the forms will be metaphysical doctrines, ethical systems, literary theories, religions, myths.
Paters scepticism led him to think that in themselves all
such systems lack sense or meaning until meaning is
conferred upon them by their capacity to give expression
to a particular temperament.[38]
Paters critical method, then, sometimes seen as a quest
for impressions, is really more a quest for the sources
of individual expression.

5 Style
Pater was much admired for his prose style, which he
strove to make worthy of his aesthetic ideals, taking great
pains and fastidiously correcting his work. He kept on
his desk little squares of paper, each with its ideas, and
shued them about attempting to form a sequence and
pattern.[39] I have known writers of every degree, but
never one to whom the act of composition was such a
travail and an agony as it was to Pater, wrote Edmund
Gosse, who also described Paters method of composition: So conscious was he of the modications and additions which would supervene that he always wrote on
ruled paper, leaving each alternate line blank.[40] He
would then make a fair copy and repeat the process, sometimes paying to have drafts printed, to judge their effect. Unlike those who were caught by Flaubert's theory of the unique word and the only epithet, wrote Osbert Burdett,[41] Pater sought the sentence, and the sentence in relation to the paragraph, and the paragraph as
a movement in the chapter. The numerous parentheses deliberately exchanged a quick ow of rhythm for
pauses, for charming little eddies by the way. At the
height of his powers as a writer, Pater discussed his principles of composition in the 1888 essay 'Style'. A. C. Benson called Paters style absolutely distinctive and entirely
new, adding, however, that it appeals, perhaps, more
to the craftsman than to the ordinary reader.[42] To G.
K. Chesterton, Paters prose, serene and contemplative
in tone, suggested a vast attempt at impartiality.[43] Indeed, in its richness, depth, and acuity, in its sensuous
rhythms, Paters style was perfectly attuned to his philosophy of life.

6 In literature
Wildes Lord Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) incessantly and wilfully misquotes
Paters Renaissance and Marius.[44]
Paters The Renaissance is praised as a wonderful
new volume in Edith Wharton's 1920 novel The
Age of Innocence, set in the 1870s.
Pater is referred to in W. Somerset Maugham's 'Of
Human Bondage', at the end of Chapter 41.
In Sinclair Lewiss Arrowsmith (chap. 1), Professor
Gottlieb tells his medical students (in his accented
English), Before the next lab hour I shall be glad
if you will read Paters 'Marius the Epicurean,' to
derife [sic] from it the calmness which iss [sic] the
secret of laboratory skill.
Lines from the 'Conclusion' to Paters Renaissance
are quoted among the sixth formers in Julian
Mitchells 1982 play Another Country.

7
Pater, along with several of his colleagues, appears
as a minor character in Tom Stoppard's play The Invention of Love.
Pater is the subject of a poem by Billy Collins named
The Great Walter Pater.
Citations from Paters The Renaissance are sprinkled
throughout Frederic Tuten's novel The Adventures of
Mao on the Long March.

REFERENCES

[19] Monsman, Gerald (1974), Pater, Hopkins and the self,

Victorian Notes.
[20] Dodd, Philip (1981), Walter Pater: An imaginative Sense
of Fact, London.
[21] A. C. Benson, Walter Pater (London, 1906), p.79
[22] Levey 1978, p. 73.
[23] Dodd, Philip, ed. (1977), Prose Studies.
[24] Levey 1978, p. 185.

References

[1] Edwards, DL (1957), A History of the Kings School, Canterbury, p. 126.

[25] Bloom, Harold, Introduction, Missing or empty |title=

(help) to Pater, Walter (1974), Selected Writings, New
York.
[26] Wright 1907, p. II.165.

[2] Levey 1978.

[27] Ward 1966, p. 194.

[3] Wright 1907, p. 211.

[28] Lucas, FL (1924) [Boston 1923], Euripides and his Inuence, Our Debt to Greece and Rome, London, p. 172.

[4] The Aesthetic Movement: Walter Pater on the Mona

Lisa. USA: Boston College. Retrieved 5 December
2012.

[29] Rothenstein, Sir William (1894), Walter Pater (lithograph; JPEG) (portrait), Odysse theater.

[5] Levey 1978, p. 125.

[30] Obituary, The Times, 14 February 1919.

[6] Levey 1978, p. 138.

[31] Wright, Thomas, The Life of Walter Pater (London,

1907), Vol.1 p.218; Levey, Michael, The Case of Walter
Pater (London, 1978), p.102

[7] Rachel Teukolsky, Walter Paters Renaissance

(1873) and the British Aesthetic Movement,
II. Reception:
branchcollective.org/?ps_articles= [32] Benson, AC (1906), Walter Pater, p. 10.
rachel-teukolsky-walter-paters-renaissance-1873-and-the-british-aesthetic-movement
[33] Evans, Lawrence (ed.), Letters of Walter Pater(Oxford,
1970), letter 28 January 1886
[8] Pater, Walter (1873), Conclusion, Studies in the History
of the Renaissance, London.
[9] Pater, Walter, Joachim du Bellay, Studies in the History
of the Renaissance.
[10] Uglow, Jennifer, Introduction in Pater 1973, p. 10.
[11] Levey 1978, pp. 1423.
[12] Blackwoods Magazine, Nov. 1873
[13] George Eliot, letter to John Blackwood, 5 November
1873, quoted in Denis Donoghues Walter Pater: Lover
of Strange Souls (New York, 1995), p.58

[34] Levey, Michael, The Case of Walter Pater (London,

1978), p.190
[35] Monsman, Gerald, Gaston de Latour: The Revised Text
(Greensboro, 1995)
[36] Monsman, Gerald, Gaston de Latour: The Revised Text
(Greensboro, 1995), dustjacket quotation
[37] Pater, Walter, 'A Novel by Mr Oscar Wilde', The Bookman, 1, Nov. 1891, pp.5960; reprinted in Walter Pater:
Sketches and Reviews (1919)

[14] Inman 1991.

[38] Wollheim, Richard (22 September 1978), The Artistic

Temperament, The Times Literary Supplement (review):
1045.

[15] Eribon, Didier (2004), Insult and the Making of the Gay
Self, Lucey, Michael (transl.), Duke University Press, pp.
15979, ISBN 0-8223-3371-6

[39] Ward 1966, p. 21.

[16] Information given by Edmund Gosse to A. C. Benson

(Bensons Diary, 73, 1 September 1905); Walter Pater:
An Imaginative Sense of Fact, ed. Philip Dodd (London,
1981), p.48
[17] A. C. Benson, Diary, 73, 1 September 1905; Walter Pater:
An Imaginative Sense of Fact, ed. Philip Dodd (London,
1981), p.48
[18] Warr, Elizabeth Jean (2011). The Oxford Plaque Guide.
Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press. pp. 96
97. ISBN 978-0-7524-5687-4.

[40] Gosse, Edmund (September 1894), Walter Pater: A Portrait, Critical Kit-Kats Check date values in: |year= /
|date= mismatch (help).
[41] Burdett, Osbert, Introduction to Marius the Epicurean,
Everyman Library, London, 1934.
[42] A. C. Benson, Walter Pater (London, 1906), p.115
[43] Chesterton, GK (1913), 1, The Victorian Age in Literature.
[44] Monsman, Gerald, Gaston de Latour: The Revised Text
(Greensboro, 1995), Introduction p.xl

Bibliography

8.1

Primary

Pater, Walter (1964), Brzenk, Eugene J, ed., Imaginary Portraits: a new collection, NY: Harper. Contains An English Poet, The Fortnightly Review,
1931.
(1970), Evans, Lawrence, ed., Letters, Oxford: Clarendon, ISBN 0-19-953507-8.
(1973), Uglow, Jennifer, ed., Essays on Literature and Art, Everyman Library, London: Dent.
Includes several essays in their original periodical
form.
(1980), Hill, Donald L, ed., The Renaissance Studies in Art and Poetry; the 1893 text, University of California Press. An annotated edition of
Paters revised text.
(1982) [1974], Bloom, Harold, ed., Selected
Writings, NY: Signet.
(1983), Bloom, Harold, ed., Plato and Platonism, NY: Chelsea House.
(1986), Small, Ian, ed., Marius the Epicurean, Oxford: Worlds Classics (facsimile of the
1934 Everymans Library edition text, with new introduction and notes).
(1994) [1985], Levey, Michael, ed., Marius
the Epicurean, Middlesex: Penguin.
(1995), Monsman, Gerald, ed., Gaston de
Latour: The Revised Text, Greensboro: ELT Press;
University of North Carolina.
(2010), Beaumont, Matthew, ed., Studies
in the History of the Renaissance, Oxford Worlds
Classics, OUP, ISBN 0-19-953507-8, ISBN 0-19953507-8. An annotated edition of the 1873 text.

Levey, Michael (1978), The Case of Walter Pater

(biography), London: Thames & Hudson.
Sharp, W. (1912), Papers Critical and Reminiscent.
Shuter, William F (1997), Rereading Walter Pater,
Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Cambridge, ISBN 0-521-01981-8
Thomas, Edward (1913), Walter Pater: A Critical
Study, London: Martin Secker
Ward, Anthony (1966), Walter Pater: The Idea in
Nature, London.
Wright, S (1975), A Bibliography of the Writings of
Walter H. Pater.
Wright, Thomas (1907), The Life of Walter Pater,
London.

9 Further reading
Inman, Billie Andrew (1991b), Paters Letters at
the Pierpont Morgan Library, English Literature in
Transition, 18801920 34 (4): 40617, ISSN 00138339. Abstract: discusses six letters of Walter Pater
at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City,
addressed to George Moore, Arthur Symons, John
Lane and others.

10 External links
Walter Pater, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Walter Pater: An Overview, Authors, Victorian
Web.
Works by Walter Pater at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Walter Pater at Internet Archive
Works by Walter Pater at LibriVox (public domain

8.2

Secondary

Benson, A. C. (1906), Walter Pater, London:

Macmillan.
Cecil, David (1955), Walter Pater the Scholar Artist,
Rede Lecture.
Donoghue, Denis (1995), Walter Pater: Lover of
Strange Souls, New York: Knopf.
Inman, Billie Andrew (1991), Estrangement and
Connection: Walter Pater, Benjamin Jowett, and
William M. Hardinge, Pater in the 1990s, archived
from the original on 4 August 2007, retrieved 27
November 2007.

audiobooks)
Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater (mr-oscar-wilde.de)
Kaylor, Michael Matthew (2006), Secreted Desires:
The Major Uranians: Hopkins, Pater and Wilde, a
500 pp scholarly volume situating Pater among the
Victorian writers of Uranian poetry and prose (the
author has made this volume available in a free,
open-access, PDF version).
Paters Grave at Holywell Cemetery, Flickr
(JPEG), Yahoo.
Blue plaque to Walter & Clara Pater on their home
in Bradmore Road, Oxford, UK: Oxfordshire blue
plaques.

10
Archival material relating to Walter Pater listed at
the UK National Archives
Portraits of Walter Horatio Pater at the National
Portrait Gallery, London

EXTERNAL LINKS

11
11.1

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

Text

Walter Pater Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Pater?oldid=675593806 Contributors: Magnus Manske, The Anome, Danny,
Camembert, Paul Barlow, Wik, SatyrTN, Jose Ramos, Rbellin, Dimadick, Bearcat, Robbot, Wereon, AtStart, Aratuk, D6, Haiduc, Ham II,
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11.2

Images

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artist: ?
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11.3

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