A school of thought with a huge impact on the arts and literature between the 1880s and World War I, Symbolism prefigured numerous aspects of modern art, from Abstraction to Surrealism. The result of over ten years of research, this work offers a new in-depth analysis of the European Symbolist movement: its conceptual background, major characteristics, ramifications, known and less well-known works, and main personalities. It situates the Symbolist artistic movement in its historical context - industrial Europe at the end of the nineteenth century - and retraces its links with the evolution of ideas, particularly in literature. Following an entirely fresh approach, the book sets out to challenge Symbolist postulates and examines the main issues raised by art at the end of the nineteenth century. This work includes new rare or previously unpublished archival documents among its sources, alongside a large number of iconic and lesser-known images, all carefully analyzed and beautifully reproduced in color.