Walter Pater is best known for his Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) and for his first novel Marius the Epicurean (1885). His short fiction deserves a much wider audience. This edition includes the four intricate and influential narratives he published as Imaginary Portraits in 1887 together with five of his other portraits, published only in periodical form. Fully annotated and supplemented by valuable contextual materials, this collection, the first critical edition of Pater's shorter fiction, makes accessible these extraordinary and impressive stories.

This is the inaugural volume of the 'Jewelled Tortoise', an MHRA series of critical editions of significant aesthetic and decadent texts, launched under the general editorship of Stefano Evangelista and Catherine Maxwell.

Lene Østermark-Johansen is associate professor in the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies at the University of Copenhagen.