Hugh Langley - Underground novel from 1896.: highly uncommon decadent novel in the form of a journal and letters, showing an infatuation with French Symbolism. There are descriptions of decadent London rooms and a good deal of drug-taking

Hugh Langley, The Tides Ebb Out to the Night. Being the Journal of a Young Man, Basil Brooke. Edited by His Friend H. Langley, The British Library, 2010. [1896.]

On any list of underground or subcultural novels, there ought to be something so rare and obscure that it gives the reader a sense of infinite regress, of occult knowledge and undiscovered layers of meaning. I’ve never read this book, nor do I expect to find a copy anytime soon. (It was published in 1896.) The New York Public Library doesn’t have it. The London library has one, or at least it’s listed in a catalogue dated 1914. A British bookseller who found it in a house clearance a few years ago describes it thus: “Highly uncommon decadent novel in the form of a journal and letters, showing an infatuation with French Symbolism. There are descriptions of decadent London rooms and a good deal of drug-taking including kif, ‘hasheesh’ and morphine to which the chief character becomes addicted, when his love affair with a young woman goes awry. The number of decadent English novels of this period is very small: this books appears unrecorded by any of the ’90s bibliographies and, although highly accomplished, seems to have attracted very little notice in its day.” Sounds pretty good to me. - Hari Kunzru