The Right Type of Girl

Abstract Chapter 1 argues that Dowson’s preface to Verses, in which he infamously dedicates the volume to Adelaide Foltinowicz, is a canard, masking the provenance and true purport of the lyrics it contains. The greatest erotic poem of the era, ‘Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae’, best exemplifies this masking tendency: it is in fact addressed to the subject of an amorous ‘experiment’ Dowson undertook in 1889, encouraged by his reading of Murger, James, and Zola, and intended to furnish a serviceable knowledge of women to supply his fiction. This chapter tells the story of Dowson’s liaison with ‘Lena’, therefore, his first love, and first documentable muse, whom he wrote about extensively, as intended. ‘Lena’ admired Swinburne and Tennyson, and may have been a capable writer herself; when she levelled some discerning criticism at Dowson’s overtly sentimental love poetry, she provoked his symbolist turn.