Mario Praz was an Italian critic of art and literature, and a scholar of English literature. His best-known book, The Romantic Agony (1933), was a survey of the decadent, erotic and morbid themes that characterised European authors of the late 18th and 19th centuries. The book was written and published first in Italian as La carne, la morte e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica in 1930; and the most recent edition was published in Florence by Sansoni in 1996.
