Copies may be ordered of WALTER HAMILTON, 64, Bromfelde Road, Clapham, S. W., or of the
Publishers, Messrs. REEVES & TURNER, 196, Strand, W.C,
MR. E. L. BLANCHARD says: "There are many playgoers who are somewhat puzzled to understand the full significan
of the satire conveyed in the adapted comedy of "The Colonel" at the Prince of Wales's, and Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan
original comic opera of "Patience," still prolonging its singularly successful career at the Savoy Theatre. To these, and mar
others, may be safely commended a curiously interesting book, just published, called "The Esthetic Movement in England
The author, Mr. Walter Hamilton, has treated a very important subject with much care and considerable research. K
chapters on the painters and poets of the Esthetic school are excellently written and replete with information not readily
accessible, while his sketch of the career of Mr. Oscar Wilde will solve many questions to which few, even in well-informed
circles, could readily reply. "Birmingham Daily Gazette."
MR. W. M. ROSSETTI says:-"There are, I think, many true and pointed observations in your book, and I necessarily
sympathise in the general point of view which it adopts on the questions at issue."
MR. G. A. SALA writes:-"Many thanks for your book on The Esthetic Movement in England. It will be historically
curious and valuable long after the silly opposition to the movement has passed away."
"The West Middlesex Advertiser" thus described the scope of the work:--
"The origin of the Esthetic Movement in England is here ascribed to the small circle of artists and poets who styled them-
selves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, as far back as 1848. These were seven young Oxford students, namely, Holman Hunt,
John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Thomas Woolner, William Michael Rossetti, G. F. Stevens, and James Collinson,
and they started a small magazine, entitled "The Germ," to advocate their peculiar views in art and poetry. After describing
the attacks this circle was subjected to, and Mr. Ruskin's able defence of it, comes an outline of Ruskin's influence on art, and
Sir Coutts Lindsay's formation of the Grosvenor Gallery, in which nearly all the most celebrated pictures of the Esthetic
School have been exhibited, including the works of E. Burne-Jones, who is by some held to be the head of the School in
painting, and the peculiar paintings by J. A. M. Whistler. In connection with the latter artist, an account is given of the
remarkable action for libel he brought against Mr. Ruskin.
"The chapter devoted to Esthetic Culture' is one that will probably excite the greatest interest and curiosity; in it the
influence of the new School on art, music, architecture, furniture and dress is distinctly pointed out; and the undoubted good
it has achieved prove that the ridicule which has hitherto been directed against the Esthetes was both unjust and unreasonable.
"The poetry of the Esthetic School is next described, and naturally leads up to an account of Robert Buchanan's attacks
upon Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Fleshly School, with the law-suit that arose out of the curious anonymous poem, "Jonas
Fisher." These chapters are full of literary details, which will interest admirers of Swinburne, Morris, Rossetti, and Buchanan,
whilst the article on Oscar Wilde contains facts and anecdotes concerning that talented young poet, which will certainly be
new to the general public, and extracts from his poems of a stamp likely to astonish some of those who now think it "good
form' to sneer at the Esthetic bard.
"The author has throughout treated his topic in a reverent spirit; indeed, he deprecates the frivolity of those who,
without understanding its aims or meaning, choose to ridicule Estheticism, and if he is not himself an Esthete, he is at any