Brian Stableford is one of Britain's leading writers of science fiction and fantasy. He is the editor of The Dedalus Book of Decadence, The Second Dedalus Book of Decadence, The Dedalus Book of British Fantasy and Tales of the Wandering Jew. He has translated for Dedalus, under the pseudonym of Francis Amery, Monsieur de Phocas by Jean Lorrain and The Angels of Perversity by Remy de Gourmont.

The Decadent Movement which flourished in the 1890s produced some of Europe's most striking and exotic works of literature. The Decadents, convinced that civilisation was in a state of terminal decline, refused to rebel as the Romantics had, but set forth instead to cultivate the pleasures of calculated perversity and to seek the artificial paradise of drug-induced hallucination.

J.-K. Huysmans described Decadence as a 'black feast' and The Second Dedalus Book of Decadence offers a veritable banquet, with offerings from the major practitioners in France and England. It completes Brian Stableford seminal two-volume study of the decadent movement.