Saltus, Edgar Evertson

▪ American novelist

born Oct. 8, 1855, New York City

died July 31, 1921, New York City

      one of the few U.S. novelists who adopted the sophisticated cynicism, art-for-art's-sake credo, and other mannerisms of the European school of Decadents (Decadent). In his time his novels were popular for their wit and for their shocking, erotic incidents.

      Educated at Yale and abroad, Saltus took a law degree at Columbia College in 1880 but never practiced. He wrote popularized histories of the Roman emperors, Imperial Purple (1893), and of the Russian tsars, Imperial Orgy (1920). In addition he wrote books on Balzac and Schopenhauer and The Anatomy of Negation (1886), a study of antitheistic philosophies from earliest times.

* * *