Wormwood: Writings about fantasy, supernatural and decadent literature is a magazine of literature and literary criticism, edited by Mark Valentine

Mark Valentine

Mark Valentine is an English author, biographer and editor.Valentine’s short stories have been published by a number of small presses and in anthologies since the 1980s, and the exploits of his series character, "The Connoisseur", an occult detective, were published as The Collected Connoisseur in...

, and published semi-annually since 2003 by Tartarus Press

Tartarus Press

Tartarus Press is a small, international award-winning, independent small press run by R.B. Russell and Rosalie Parker. It has two distinct specialities....

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As the subtitle indicates, the magazine focuses on fantasy and decadence

Decadent movement

The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.-Overview:...

, and especially on European authors of the past two centuries. Most of the selections are criticism articles or book reviews, although some previously unpublished fiction has recently appeared. Issues 1-14 featured a column titled "The Decadent World-View" by Brian Stableford

Brian Stableford

Brian Michael Stableford is a British science fiction writer who has published more than 70 novels. His earlier books were published as by Brian M. Stableford, but more recent ones have dropped the middle initial and appeared under the name Brian Stableford...

, analyzing texts which provided particular influence on the French Decadents, particularly Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...

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