At a glance:
First Published: 1920
Type of Plot: Satire
Time of Work: The 1890’s and 1997
Setting: London
Characters: Enoch Soames, The narrator, Will Rothenstein, The
devil
Genres: Short fiction, Fantasy, Wit and humor, Time travel
fiction
Subjects: Memory, Philosophy or philosophers, Authors or
writers, Art or artists, Fantasy, Faustian bargains, Devils or demons, Satire,
Pretensions, Nostalgia
Locales: Europe, London, England, United Kingdom
The Story
The narrator, a middle-aged, well-known author, looks back on
his introduction to London artistic life as a young man in the 1890’s. He
remembers the fashionable aesthetes with whom he became acquainted, figures
whom he then viewed with uncritical, youthful reverence. He mentions actual
places and people, such as the portrait painter Will Rothenstein. In this
historical context, the fictional protagonist of the story appears: Enoch
Soames. Soames tries to force his company on the preoccupied Rothenstein at a
restaurant table where the painter and narrator sit...
