The Pagan Review

It was created by the Scottish writer William Sharp, who was called a pagan in a review of his poetry collection Sospiri di Roma (1891) and came to embrace the label.

William Sharp (1855–1905) was a Scottish writer who defended the creation of beauty and wanted to challenge the Victorian era's norms for poetic form and sexuality.

[1] He was called a pagan in The Scotsman's review of his poetry collection Sospiri di Roma (1891), which was written in Rome and used naked ancient statues as a starting point for praising human sensuality.

[3] The Pagan Review was written soon after Sharp and his wife Elizabeth had settled in the countryside of Sussex, ending their bohemian lifestyle in Italy and France and starting a productive period of writing.

[3] "The Pagans: a Memory" was written on 3 and 4 June and appears to be partially autobiographical, as it mirrors Sharp's time with his lover Edith Rinder in Rome and Paris.

They, not M. Paul Verlaine, not even Mr. George Meredith, not even Beaudelaire (as the Pagan Review calls that author, who himself smote the Neo-Pagans in a memorable essay) are the guides to follow.

[26] Lewis said Sharp "may have thought that it was the NeoPagan element in his books which made them so attractive to a large and faithful company of readers, and he may have been quite right in so thinking; but he did not perceive the risks he ran in abstracting them from their imaginative and literary setting, and exposing them in all the nakedness of their proper name".