Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915) was the most important literary critic of his era, and his studies of authors involved in the Symbolist Movement, many of them collected in Le Livre des masques (1896) and Le Deuxième livre des masques (1898), provided an invaluable map of its extent and a commentary on its ambitions. He became the principal theorist of Symbolism and Decadence, which he regarded as identical. He was one of the founders of the Mercure de France and its most prolific contributor, developing his distinctively mannered short fiction in its pages. He collaborated with Alfred Jarry in 1893-94 on L’Ymagier, a periodical devoted to Symbolist art.
 
Originally published in 1898, From a Faraway Land, here translated into English for the first time by Brian Stableford, is one of the quintessential collections of Symbolist short fiction, by Remy de Gourmont, one of France’s greatest writers. With their sophisticated understatement, these stories employ symbolism in its most extreme form, that of allegory, and are unquestionably among the author’s most refined accomplishments.