G. S. Street

Who was G. S. Street?

George Slythe Street was a British critic, journalist and novelist. He was born in Wimbledon, London on July 18, 1867. He was associated with William Ernest Henley and the 'counter-Decadents' on the staff of the National Observer. His works were characterized by "whimsy, detachment, sympathy, tenderness, satire, humor, and occasionally cynicism". Street's satirical works assailed "snobbery, hypocrisy, vulgarity, and pretentiousness at all levels of society, especially among the aesthetes and the upper class". He is perhaps best known for his 1894 novel, the Autobiography of a Boy, which satirized contemporary aesthetes Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, although Street would later write favorably of Wilde's De Profundis. He died on October 31, 1936.