London during the mid- and late-Victorian period was a place of refuge from the tensions of France. In this book, originally published in 1974, Cecily Mackworth writes about four outstanding French poets who came to England at that time. Mallarmé, Verlaine, Paul Valéry and Valery Larbaud each discovered England at a period when great changes were taking place in Anglo-French relations and especially between the intellectuals of the two countries. Each was marked indelibly in his life and work by an early contact with England. The book sheds important light on the effect of these visits on their life and work. It looks at their visits against the background of the French colony in London, and in relation to the changing intellectual attitudes between France and England.
1. Honeyed Poison
2. The Young Mallarmé3. Verlaines England
4.
Lecturing in England: Mallarmé and Verlaine
5. Aestheticism and Imperialism:
Paul Valéry in London
6. Valery Larbaud and the Heart of England
7. Four
Englands.
Cecily Mackworth (19112006) was a writer, traveller, war correspondent and rebel. Life took her from the London School of Economics in the early 1930s through the Reichstag fire, the fall of France and the birth of Israel to the Paris of the 21st century. She had lived in Paris since the 1940s. During the next 30 years she published widely books and reviews. Notably, Guillaume Apollinaire and the Cubist life (1961) received the Darmstadt Award. Her contribution to Mallarmé studies is substantial.
