Collecting together eighty-six different pieces of prose from sixty-one authors, Decadence and Sybmolism: A Showcase Anthology, is the most broad-ranging anthology of its kind. Surveying the movements from their beginnings onward, the volume brings together texts from well-known exponents such as Rimbaud and Baudelaire, as well as numerous lesser-known authors, many of whose work is being made available in English for the first time.

Editor and translator Brian Stableford provides an in-depth introductory essay, as well as brief biographies of the various personalities presented.

Complete list of authors included:

Charles Baudelaire
Arthur Rimbaud
Théophile Gautier
Xavier Forneret
Théodore de Banville
Paul Verlaine
X. B. Saintine
Auguste de Villiers de l'Isle Adam
Ernest Hello
Catulle Mendès
Joris-Karl Huysmans
Charles Cros
Frédéric Champsaur
Stéphane Mallarmé
Jean Moréas
Gustave Kahn
Jules Laforgue
Charles Morice
G. Albert Aurier
Paul Adam
Francis Poictevin
Remy de Gourmont
André-Ferdinand Herold
Adolphe Retté
Bernard Lazare
Jean Lorrain
Pierre LouYs
Camille Mauclair
Stuart Merrill
Éphraïm Mikhaël
Henri de Régnier
Jules Renard
Saint-Pol-Roux
Gabriel de Lautrec
Pierre Quilllard
Marcel Schwob
Frédéric Boutet
Pierre Veber
Tristan Bernard
Judith Gautier
Hugues Rebell
Gaston Danville
May Armand Blanc
Renée Vivien
Alfred Jarry
Francis Jammes
J. H. Rosny aîné
Henri Austruy
Léon Bloy
Jean Richepin
Louis Codet
Léon Daudet
Claude Cébel
Jane de La Vaudère
Edmond Haraucourt
Henry Detouche
Hélène de Zuylen de Nyevelt
Jacques Lamer
Gaston Pawlowski
Maurice Magre
Han Ryner