This is the first and only comprehensive introductory study of Walter Pater, novelist, short story writer, literary critic, and philosopher. One of the late nineteenth century's most important and least understood writers, Pater evinced a new mode of hedonism that presented a fundamental challenge to the prevailing moral and social norms of his contemporaries, responding to post-Darwinian sensibility, waning faith, and new philosophies in ethics and epistemology. In his diverse and daring writings, Pater spoke for a generation that encompassed aestheticism, decadence and the emergence of a queer literary canon, including writers such as Oscar Wilde, Vernon Lee, and Michael Field. His defining influence continued to be felt long after his rise to fame and notoriety by such major writers such as T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. Featuring exceptional detail and thematic breadth of coverage, this Companion accessibly introduces Pater's main works and demonstrates his ongoing significance.