Collection: Joris-Karl Huysmans

Earning a wage through a career in the French civil service, Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907) quietly explored the extremes of human nature and artifice through a series of books that influenced a number of different literary movements: from the gray and grimy naturalism of books like Marthe and Downstream to the cornerstones of the decadent movement, Against Nature and the Satanist classic Down There, along with the dream-ridden Surrealist favorite, Becalmed, and his Catholic novels, The Cathedral and The Oblate.