1880–1914
Fin de Siècle
Confidence curdles into ambivalence. Aestheticism, decadence, and early psychological fiction chip away at realist certainty as a new century (and a catastrophe) approaches.
Reading path
Fin de Siècle
Confidence curdles into dread, one gorgeous, over-ripe sentence at a time.
8 stepsMovements of this era
The Bengali Renaissance
Colonial Calcutta invents the modern Indian novel, and gives it a Nobel laureate.
The Modern Breakthrough & the Nordic Novel
Brandes demands literature 'put problems under debate,' and Scandinavia collects Nobels like berries.
Decadence & Aestheticism
Art for art's sake: beauty, artifice, and forbidden pleasure against bourgeois virtue.
The Russian Silver Age
Symbolism, apocalypse, and the last flowering of Russian literature before Stalin's clampdown.
The Generation of '98
Spain loses its last colonies in 1898 and turns the disaster into a national X-ray.
Authors of this era
1832–1910Bjørnstjerne BjørnsonNorway1838–1894Bankim Chandra ChattopadhyayIndia (Bengal)1848–1907Joris-Karl HuysmansFrance1854–1900Oscar WildeIreland1857–1919Karl GjellerupDenmark1858–1940Selma LagerlöfSweden1859–1952Knut HamsunNorway1861–1941Rabindranath TagoreIndia (Bengal)1863–1938Gabriele D'AnnunzioItaly1864–1936Miguel de UnamunoSpain1870–1953Ivan BuninRussia1872–1956Pío BarojaSpain1873–1950Johannes V. JensenDenmark1876–1938Sarat Chandra ChattopadhyayIndia (Bengal)1880–1934Andrei BelyRussia1882–1949Sigrid UndsetNorway1884–1937Yevgeny ZamyatinRussia1885–1962Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)Denmark1888–1964Frans Eemil SillanpääFinland1902–1998Halldór LaxnessIceland