Charles Morice (1860-1919), a Symbolist writer and art critic who was an early champion of people such as Paul Verlaine, Rodin, Pablo Picasso and Paul Gauguin, produced during his lifetime a great deal of literature, but only a single volume of short prose pieces, Quincaille, from which the stories and prose-poems in this current volume are taken, translated into English by Brian Stableford for the first time.Morice's prose poems and short stories frequently blend the lachrymose and the cynical in a distinctive alloy, shaped by his particular Symbolist method and Decadent style, which bring many of his confessional pieces close to a surreal stream-of-consciousness that was somewhat ahead of its time, but his works span a broad and rich spectrum, illustrated by the selections translated herein.