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RESEARCH PRODUCT

« A Different Symons »

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The critical reception of critic, journalist and short-novelist A. Symons raises the question of increased specialisation incapable to acknowledge the diversity of his interests. Seen as a transitional writer between Aestheticism and early Modernism, credited with introducing French Symbolism in Britain, he is usually considered as a writer whose nervous breakdown in 1908 put an end to a promising maturity. This paper suggests that we shift the focus and the corresponding vision of Symons by assessing his reception in French-speaking countries, including his academic reception, from 1890 to 2015. Recognized by the French and the Belgians as a British poet quite early in the 1900s Symons’s fortunes faded and re-surfaced as he became a gifted member of European Symbolism.