France

Abstract Fin-de-siècle French decadence is one expression of the partial autonomy from political power in literature and the arts, both of which established their own frames of reference and legitimation. This article retraces the history of decadence in France in the 1880s. Envisaging decadence as both an infamous appellation and a literary movement embedded within a specific ecosystem of little magazines, it presents canonical works such as Huysmans’s À rebours and the poetry of Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé, and explores some notable little magazines where decadent writings first appeared, paying attention to some of the quarrels that led to the emergence of symbolism and instrumentism originating from decadent works in the late 1880s. Literary decadence helped shape the little magazines of the 1890s while also heralding modern poetry.