This book treats the literary work of Julia Augusta Webster within the context of Webster's participation in nineteenth-century British aestheticism. Webster's personal life, her experience as a member of the Suffrage Society and her tenure on the London School Board, as well as her position as poetry reviewer for the Athenaeum and participation in the salon society of the 1880s, inform her later work, but her earliest poetry and fiction also reflect the beginnings of the aestheticist perspective on the transience and impermanence of life. This book makes use of extensive archival materials to provide context for a study of Webster's literary work, beginning with her first volume of poetry "Blanche Lisle" and concluding with her posthumously published "Mother and Daughter" sonnets. In tracing the trajectory of Webster's development as an aestheticist poet, Patricia Rigg extends Webster scholarship into areas of the writer's work not previously explored. Patricia Diane Rigg is Professor and Chair of English at Acadia University.