Ernest Christopher Dowson (2 August 1867 – 23 February 1900) was an English poet, novelist, and short-story writer who is often associated with the Decadent movement.

He led an active social life, carousing with medical students and law pupils, visiting music halls, and taking the performers to dinner.

Later in his career Dowson became a translator of French fiction, including novels by Balzac and the Goncourt brothers, and Les Liaisons dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Dowson provides the earliest recorded use of the word "soccer" in written language, although he spelled it "socca".

[c] Dowson's prose works include the short stories collected as Dilemmas (1895), and the two novels A Comedy of Masks (1893) and Adrian Rome (each co-written with Arthur Moore).

"Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae" was first published in The Second Book of the Rhymer's Club in 1894,[12] and was noticed by Richard Le Gallienne in his "Wanderings in Bookland" column in The Idler, Volume 9.

[13] Citations Sources Primary works (modern scholarly editions) Biographies Critical Studies on Dowson and the 1890s