Symbolism, Dada, Surrealisms

A collection of highlights from Mary Ann Caws's long, highly distinguished career writing about literature, art, and modernism.

Throughout her long, highly distinguished career writing about literature and art, Mary Ann Caws has excavated, illuminated, and examined in depth the most intriguing works and personalities of Symbolism, Dada, Surrealism, and beyond. In these concise, but always colourful and insightful articles, Caws brings us fresh portraits of the most famous figures and introduces us to the writers and artists who merit more attention than they've received, with a special focus on female writers and artists.

The author's sensitivity to the intersections of eccentric literature and eccentric life infuses each critical essay with the human passions that these essential modernists lived. From Dickinson and Mallarme to Duchamp and Mina Loy, Caws applies the art of close looking to shrewdly framed slices of the modernist experience.

'I cannot overstate the gift and importance of these selected writings by Caws. In an age in which so many have found sustained looking, thinking, reading, and optimism difficult to maintain, here come these essays, to seduce us back into absorption, openness, and wonder. Caws’s intellect is such a rare and precious variety: rigorous and dense with all the freshness of open windows and swinging doors (as befits her subjects). I want to read every word she’s written here and take the stupendous journey she’s taken through life and art alongside her.' - Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts

'Caws is renowned for the wit, intelligence, and warmth of her writing and this collection makes it possible for us to explore a wide range of her essays. Revealing the extraordinary variety of her interests, the depth of her knowledge, and perhaps above all her love for the subjects she studies, these essays are not only an outstanding resource for scholars but a joy for everyone to discover or revisit, a cornucopia of insights and revelations.' - Rosemary Lloyd, Rudy Professor Emerita of French, Indiana University, and emeritus fellow in French, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge