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Henry Harland and the Aesthetic Movement

 

Henry Harland (1 March 1861 – 20 December 1905) moved to London in 1889, and fell under the influence of the Aesthetic movement. He began writing under his own name and, in 1894, became the founding editor of The Yellow Book. The short story collections of this new period, A Latin Quarter Courtship (1889), Mademoiselle Miss (1893), Grey Roses (1895), and Comedies and Errors (1898), were praised by critics but had little general popularity. He finally achieved a wide readership with The Cardinal's Snuff-box (1900), which was followed by The Lady Paramount (1901) and My Friend Prospero (1903). Hamlin Garland met him around this time and noted that he had affected an affected English accent. Garland recalled, "his 'extraordinary' English accent was comical. He spoke quite like the caricatured Englishman of our comedy stage. He is completely expatriated now and unpleasantly aggressive in his defense of England and English ways."

Harland's last novel, The Royal End (1909), was incomplete when he died. His wife finished it according to his notes. He died in 1905 at Sanremo, Italy, after a prolonged period of tuberculosis.

After his death, Henry James wrote positively about both Harland and The Yellow Book, though he had previously disparaged both.

Aestheticism (also the Aesthetic Movement) was an art movement in the late 19th century which privileged the aesthetic value of literature, music and the arts over their socio-political functions. 

According to Aestheticism, art should be produced to be beautiful, rather than to serve a moral, allegorical, or other didactic purpose, a sentiment exemplified by the slogan "art for art's sake." 

Aestheticism originated in 1860s England with a radical group of artists and designers, including William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It flourished in the 1870s and 1880s, gaining prominence and the support of notable writers such as Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde.

Aestheticism challenged the values of mainstream Victorian culture, as many Victorians believed that literature and art fulfilled important ethical roles. Writing in The Guardian, Fiona McCarthy states that "the aesthetic movement stood in stark and sometimes shocking contrast to the crass materialism of Britain in the 19th century."

Aestheticism was named by the critic Walter Hamilton in The Aesthetic Movement in England in 1882.