`Better to Reign in Hell than Serve in Heaven'

Abstract

John Davidson is one of the most controversial poets of the late Victorian and Edwardian period. A precursor of modernism, he experimented with new aesthetic forms of representation, broke with many ethical taboos of his contemporaries, and merged political, evolutionary, racist and imperialist thought. Drawing on a wide range of poems and essays taken from the different stages of Davidson's career, this article contests conventional readings of his poetry and socio-philosophical convictions as a progressive development from a liberal, socially critical to a radical, materialist, atheist position. It sets out to demonstrate that the constituent elements of Davidson's Social Darwinist view of the world and philosophy of life, which he brings to the subjects of social class and imperialism, permeates his early writing as well as his later work written under the influence of Nietzsche.