Edgar Saltus

Imperial Purple (1892). By Edgar Saltus

For his most famous book, Imperial Purple, Saltus, novelist, poet and essayist, drew heavily from the histories of Suetonius and Tacitus to create a portrait of the bloody pageantry of Rome, from the majestic Julius Caesar to the freakish Heliogabalus. Contents: That Woman; Conjectural Rome; Fabulous Fields; The Pursuit of the Impossible; Nero; The House of Flavia; The Poison in the Purple; Faustine; and The Agony........ Edgar Evertson Saltus (October 8, 1855 - July 31, 1921) was an American writer known for his highly refined prose style. His works paralleled those by European decadent authors such as Joris-Karl Huysmans and Oscar Wilde. Life: Edgar Saltus was born in New York City on October 8, 1855 to Francis Henry Saltus and his second wife, Eliza Evertson, both of Dutch descent. After two semesters at Yale University, Saltus entered Columbia Law School in 1878, graduating with a law degree in 1880. He wrote two books of philosophy: The Philosophy of Disenchantment (1885) focused on pessimism and in particular the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Eduard Von Hartmann, while The Anatomy of Negation (1886) tried "to convey a tableau of anti-theism from Kapila to Leconte de Lisle". His elder half-brother Francis Saltus Saltus was a minor poet. Both brothers are buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York..........