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Described by W. B. Yeats as a "scholar, connoisseur, drunkard, poet, pervert, most charming of men," Count Stanislaus Eric Stenbock (1860 - 1895) is surely the greatestexemplar of the Decadent movement of the late nineteenthcentury. A friend of Aubrey Beardsley, patron of the extraordinary pre-Raphaelite artist Simeon Solomon, and contemporary of Oscar Wilde, Stenbock died at the age of thirty-six as a result of his addiction to opium and his alcoholism, having published just three slim volumes of suicidal poetry and one collection of morbid short stories. Of Kings and Things is the first introduction to Stenbock´s writing for the general reader, offering fifteen stories, eight poems and one autobiographical essay by this complex figure.

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Stanislaus Eric Stenbock was a poet in the Decadent movement. David Tibet is a British poet and artist, founder of the music group Current 93..

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