Enoch Soames

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...