Joris-Karl Huysmans

Joris-Karl Huysmans was a French novelist of Dutch descent who spent thirty-two years as a civil servant in the Ministry of the Interior while writing the most exquisite books in France. À rebours (1884) broke with naturalism and became the bible of the decadents; it was the poisonous French novel produced against Wilde at his trial. He later returned to Catholicism and became an oblate.