The Collected Works of Walter Pater, Volume I: The Renaissance

Walter Pater’s first book, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), is a landmark in Victorian intellectual and cultural history. The first book-length study of the Renaissance by a British writer, it was also described as the ’golden book’ of British aestheticism by Oscar Wilde. Following its sensational debut, Pater oversaw three further editions under a new title, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry. The book’s dynamic textual history describes, indeed precipitates, a fast-moving journey from high Victorian intellectualism towards decadence. This edition, based on the fourth edition (1893), recovers the book’s exciting cultural context in its twenty-five-year evolution from periodical articles into one of the period’s most influential volumes.

With kaleidoscopic interests and an inquiring, speculative intelligence, Pater was steeped in the cultural and intellectual life of his age, responding creatively to what he read and saw to envisage new ways of engaging with the world. This edition reveals Pater’s interests in contemporary arts and aesthetics, cutting-edge science, and emerging social sciences, and how these contributed to his radical revisioning of the history of the Renaissance. Responses to quattrocento artists are shot through with references to the art and literature of his own time; even Pater’s most lyrical passages echo his reading in Victorian anthropology, psychology, and geomorphology.

The Renaissance offered sensual enjoyments that transformed and re-enchanted the experience of modernity. Its arresting account of paintings, sculptures, and literature elevated intensity of experience as the goal of life while remaking the reputations of artists like Botticelli and Leonardo. This edition connects Pater’s experience of Renaissance art to the temper of his own time, both directly, beginning with his first visit to Italy in 1865, and indirectly, through the work of the Pre-Raphaelites in whose circle he moved and who, like him, mediated the Renaissance to the modern world. Generously illustrated, it captures Pater’s articulation of art and ideas now fundamental to western thought.

Hilary Fraser, Professor Emerita, Birkbeck, University of London

Hilary Fraser is Professor Emerita at Birkbeck, University of London. She taught at Buckingham University (1978-1982), the University of Western Australia (1982-2000), and was Dean of Arts and Humanities at Canterbury Christ Church (2001-2002). In 2002 she became Tillotson Chair of Nineteenth-Century Studies at Birkbeck, where she served as Head of English (2005-2009), and Dean of Arts (2009-2017). She was Director of Birkbeck’s Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies (2002-2012) and founding editor of its online journal 19, launched in 2005. She was President of the British Association of Victorian Studies from 2015-2018.