Inroduction: Constructing a Homoerotic Muse

In contrast to Michael Field and some of her other Bodley Head contemporaries, Olive Custance has yet to be the subject of a sustained critical revival. Even among scholars of fin-de-siècle poetry, she remains primarily known as the wife of Lord Alfred Douglas, who is himself chiefly remembered as the lover of Oscar Wilde. Another arena in which Custance's name arises is that of lesbian biography, in which her rumoured entanglements with Natalie Barney and Renée Vivien in Paris attract passing interest. But although the details of Custance's, personal life are admittedly intriguing, her poetry itself has received little critical comment. In part, this is due to Custance's, difficult historical positioning. Publishing her first volume in 1897, and three subsequent volumes between 1902 and 1911, the majority of Custance's output falls outside the bounds of the fin de siècle (which some critics argue ends in 1895, following Wilde's, imprisonment). However, Custance's, decadent poetry is also out of place in the early twentieth century: writing in 1914, Holbrook Jackson groups her with the ‘minor poets’ who ‘give expression to moods more attuned to end-of-the-century emotions’.

Custance's, problematic position, as a distinctly fin-de-siècle poet who published nothing following the Great War, contributes to the impression that her work is irrelevant to the concerns of modernity.