Edgar Evertson Saltus (October 8, 1855 – July 31, 1921) was an American writer known for his highly refined prose style. His works paralleled those by European decadent authors such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, Gabriele D'Annunzio and Oscar Wilde.
Under the pseudonym Myndart Verelst, Saltus translated works by Balzac, Théophile Gautier, and Prosper Mérimée; he also wrote using the name Archibald Wilberforce.
Early life and education
Edgar Saltus was born in New York City on October 8, 1855, to Francis Henry Saltus and his second wife, Eliza Evertson, both of Dutch descent. He attended St. Paul's in Concord, New Hampshire. After two semesters at Yale University, Saltus entered Columbia Law School in 1878, graduating with a law degree in 1880.
Career
He wrote two books on philosophy: The Philosophy of Disenchantment (1885) focused on philosophical pessimism and in particular the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann, while The Anatomy of Negation (1886) tried "to convey a tableau of anti-theism from Kapila to Leconte de Lisle".
After a conversion experience, the once anti-theist and pessimist credited Ralph Waldo Emerson with having transformed his views. In an 1896 Collier's column, he wrote, "I began to see, and what to me was even more marvelous, I began to think." In time, he became a member of the Theosophical Society, an organization that studied, synthesized and experimented with the more esoteric concepts and practices of world religions.
Personal life
Saltus was married three times. He married his first wife, Helen Sturgis Read, in 1883 (divorced, 1891). At the church in the English Embassy in Paris, he married in 1895 Elsie Welch Smith (separated, 1901; died, 1911). Saltus married his third wife, author Marie Flores Giles, in 1911. Saltus had a three-year love affair in the 1890s with heiress Aimée Crocker, confirmed in her memoir And I'd Do It Again (1936).
