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The Lost Atlantis: configurations of childhood in Decadent writing, 1870–1940 Carys Rebecca Hudson (24292826) PUREID: 684101902 Decadence aestheticism symbolism childhood children's literature Victorian literature Victorian culture decadent literature Walter Pater memory individualism fin de siècle romanticism little magazines periodical culture fairy tales children's theatre arts and crafts This thesis offers the first full-length examination of the relationship between childhood and Decadent writing, analysing this intersection across multiple textual formats: poems, novels, autobiographies, children’s fairy tales, plays, and periodicals. Where existing scholarship has positioned Decadence as a movement preoccupied with adult interests, this thesis demonstrates that the figure of the child was positioned centrally to many of its aesthetic and philosophical commitments. Drawing on the philosophies of Walter Pater (1839–1894), particularly his theory of aesthetic individualism, it argues that Decadent writers positioned children as both generative artists and responsive critics. The thesis recovers a network of writers whose configurations of childhood have yet to receive sustained critical attention in their Decadent contexts: Arthur Machen (1863–1947), Forrest Reid (1875–1947), Evelyn Sharp (1869–1955), Mabel Dearmer (1872–1915), Netta Syrett (1865–1943), and Joseph Gleeson White (1851–1898). Appropriating Romantic inheritances, it demonstrates how Decadent writing transformed earlier models of childhood into pursuits of aesthetic transcendence characterised by poetics of fragility and futility. Each writer mobilises the child-figure differently. While Machen explores the child as an originating source from which the artist’s recollection of beauty derives, Reid navigates the relationship between childhood memory and aesthetic self-renovation. Women writers Sharp, Syrett, and Dearmer reconfigure the child’s ‘play’ as a Paterian practice, recuperating these modes as generative forms of self-culture, and White’s gift-book The Parade (1897) contemplates the child’s productive responsivity through the material form of the illustrated book. Collectively, these writers configured childhood as a site of aesthetic resistance against the rationalising forces of modernity and industrialisation, challenging narratives of cultural progress. Ultimately, this thesis argues that childhood, far from peripheral to Decadence, constitutes a sustained meditation on aesthetic perception, artistic formation, and the possibilities of recovering beauty in an age of perceived decline. Thesis is embargoed until 31 July 2031. 2026-10-01T16:14:24Z Text Thesis 10.17034/32805641.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/The_Lost_Atlantis_configurations_of_childhood_in_Decadent_writing_1870_1940/32805641 All Rights Reserved Open Access after 2031-07-31