Edgar Saltus

Historia Amoris: a History of Love Ancient and Modern Edgar Saltus

Publisher Marketing: EDGAR SALTUS is held by some to be our greatest American stylist. Others regard him as a mere dazzling juggler of words. But, strangely enough, he has remained, with twenty books to his credit, in what one critic terms "distinguished obscurity." His published "Historia Amoris" fills the hearts of the elect with strange exultation. "Saltus," says William Marion Reedy in the "St. Louis Mirror," "is simply fascinatingly diabolic in his wisdom and his wit and his word-wizardry. He catches flashes from many facets of the jewel, Love. Mostly he delights in the recondite colors of its spectrum analysis, its rays X or N, or what others may be." Bliss Carman, in the . Brooklyn Eagle, affirms a similar verdict. He attributes to Mr. Saltus a brilliant style, daring fancy, fearless epigram, polished wit, qualities of genius and marvelous talent. The "San Francisco Argonaut" asserts that his artistic stature is greater than sixty times six best-sellers. His prose, we are told, at its best, is comparable to Oscar Wilde's. "Like Wilde he writes for the few; he has something of the same surface scholarship mingled with estheticism; his writing is recherche; his discourses are filled with the information of culture." To-day Edgar Saltus has almost completed his fiftieth year. He has written philosophy and fiction, journalism and poetry. -"Current Literature," Volume 43