Nietzsche in England 1890-1914: The Growth of a Reputation

Knowledge of Nietzsche's writings came late to England, but his works, since they were known, provoked in the literary and sometimes even the daily press a strong partisan reaction ranging from fawning praise to caricature and denunciation. Real knowledge of Nietzschean thought based on a sound understanding of the major works was slow is developing. It is this development that Dr. Thatcher traces in his lucid and scholarly study.

Through English literary works and critical periodcials of the imperial fin de siècleand the pre-war years we see Nietzsche's ideas pass from notoriety to increasingly sympathetic acceptance. The author studies in detail Nietzsche's influence on five writers -- John Davidson, Havelock Ellis, A.R. Orage (editor of New Age), George Bernard Shaw, and W.B. Yeats. The chapter on Yeats stands at the heart of the book and suggests that Yeats rather than Shaw was the chief beneficiary of the Nietzsche movement in England. Nietzsche's influence on writers as diverse as Author Symons, George Moore, James Joyce, G.K. Chesterton, H.G. Wells, T.E. Hulme, T.S. Eliot, Edwin Muir, and Herbert Read is also examined. Dr. Thatcher argues that many creative writers sought in different ways to emulate Nietzsche's example, to effect "a transvaluation of values" that would bring a heroic vision to an unheroic age. The fascination which Nietzsche's superman held for this generation is carefully examined; indeed the idea of the superman is a liefmotif in the work. Throughout the book the social, political, and culturel temper of pre-war England is re-created to explain the sometimes unexpected directions which Nietzsche's influence took.

This volume makes a substantial contribution to the history of ideas and to the study of influences on some major English writers. Its successful re-creation of the intellectual atmosphere of an era will interest students of literature, philosophy, and cultural history. An extensive bibliography of Neitzsche scholarship is included, containing some previously unrecorded iteams