The street of wonderful possibilities - Devon Cox

This beautifully illustrated art history and cultural biography tells the fascinating story of Tite street, where artistic talents including James Whistler, Oscar Wilde and John Singer Sargent lived and thrived.

Tite Street in Chelsea, West London was one of the most influential artistic quarters in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - a staggering amount of talent thrived in this little riverside street during the fin de siecle, from painters to writers to musicians.

Throughout its turbulent existence, Tite Street mirrored the world around it. From the Aesthetic movement and its challenge to Victorian values, through the Edwardian struggle for women's suffrage, to the bombs of the Blitz in the 1940s, it remained home to innumerable artists and writers, socialites and suffragettes, musicians and madmen.

For Wilde, the street was full of 'wonderful possibilities', while for Whistler it was 'the birthplace of art', where a new brand of aestheticism was nurtured in his controversial White House. Modern masterpieces in art and literature flowed from the studios and houses of Tite Street, but this bohemian enclave had a dark side as well. Here Whistler was bankrupted, Frank Miles was sent to an asylum, Wilde was imprisoned, and Peter Warlock was gassed to death.

The Street of Wonderful Possibilitiesreveals this complex history, tying together private and professional lives to form a colourful tapestry of art and intrigue, illuminating their relationships to each other, to Tite Street and to a rapidly modernising London at the fin de sicle.