A very good set (slight wear to fore-edge corners, modest handling signs to the binding) of the interesting English aesthetic and arts and crafts journal, a bridge between the Pre-Raphaelite and the Decadent. It was notionally the organ of the Century Guild, an informal grouping with the stated aim “to render all branches of art the sphere no longer of the tradesman but of the artist. It would restore building, decoration, glass painting, pottery, wood carving and metalwork to their right place beside painting and sculpture.” The Guild had a house at 20 Fitzroy Street, where several of the members lived: Ernest Dowson was consciously exaggerating when he described it as “a colony à la Thoreau of Hobby Horse people and a few elect outsiders each with a ‘beloved’ … where there will be leisure only for art and unrestrained sexual intercourse.” (quoted by Adams). Poor Lionel Johnson was to be evicted from this Eden, after his late night drinking habits led to his being condemned as a fire hazard.
Its connections with the Rhymers’ Club are many, and if it deserved its place in the collection for no other reason, it would earn it for seeing the first publication of Dowson’s “Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae”.
Although Wilde contributes only an essay on the manuscript of Keats’ sonnet “On Blue” (an essay by him on Thomas Chatterton was promised but never delivered), Matthew Tildesley, in an interesting article in The Wildean presents The Hobby Horse as a mirror of the London that produced Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray:” The turning point in Dorian’s life, from a passive aestheticism to a more active decadence as a result of his embracing Lord Henry’s Paterian philosophy, is a crucial moment in the book, and also has significant resonance for the artistic communities of fìn-de-siècle London of which the Century Guild were part.”
