Introduction : The "intrinsic beauty" of art / Ann Moseley and Sarah Cheney Watson. Part I : The aesthetic movement Exit smiling : the case for Paul's dandyism / Timothy W. Bintrim --

Innocence and experience, good and evil, and doppelgangers : decadent aesthetics in Cather's "Consequences," James's "The jolly corner," and Wilde's The picture of Dorian Gray / Sonja Froiland Lynch and Robert Lee Lynch --

Willa Cather's time machine : Alexander's bridge, H.G. Wells, and aesthetic temporality / Peter Betjemann --

Aestheticism and the dispossessed : Cather's dual Europe in America / Nicholas Birns --

Willa Cather's disenchanted epicurean : Godfrey St. Peter in The professor's house / Sarah Cheney Watson --

Part II : The visual arts The arts and crafts on Willa Cather's frontier / Leona Sevick --

Cather's "Twilight stage" : aestheticism, tonalism, and modernist sentiment / Joseph C. Murphy --

Willa Cather, the Nabi of Red Cloud / Mark Facknitz --

Blessed damsels, lost ladies, and Cather's real women / Angela Conrad --

Fernand Léger and Willa Cather's "Coming, Aphrodite!" / Jacqueline H. Harris --

Part III : Movement toward modernism "The nude had descended the staircase" : Katherine Anne Porter looks at Willa Cather looking at modern art / Janis P. Stout --

With the "hand, fastidious and bold" : bridging Walter Pater's aestheticism and Willa Cather's modernism / Olga Aksakalova --

From British aestheticism to American modernism : Cather's transforming vision / Jo Ann Middleton --

Part IV : Art and religion Willa Cather's sheltering art : Cather's cathedral and the Adams factor / John J. Murphy.