Plato and Platonism: A Series of Lectures

Walter Pater (1839-1894) was English essayist and critic. A leader in the 19th-century revival of interest in Renaissance art and Humanism, Pater was a formulator of the doctrine that art and aesthetics are in themselves one of the ends of life. His works, noted for their stylistic purity and precision, include Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873); the philosophic novel Marius the Epicurean (1885), generally considered his masterpiece; Plato and Platonism (1893); the partly autobiographical The Child in the House (1894); Greek Studies (1895); and the five posthumously published chapters Gaston de Latour (1896), a novel left unfinished at his death.