Remy de Gourmont

Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915) came from an aristocratic Normandy family which had fallen on hard times. He abandoned his law studies & obtained a badly paid job at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris in 1884 which he lost in 1891 for writing an article Le Joujou-Patriotisme (Patriotism, a toy) for the magazine Mercure de France & became a full-time writer. He is considered as one of the finest critics associated with the Symbolist movement. The stories collected together under the title The Angels of Perversity are case studies of sexual attraction.