 What made the book a success was its suggestion of a medical diagnosis of "degeneration," a neuro-pathology that resulted in these behaviors.It also helped that the book named such figures as Oscar Wilde, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Paul Verlaine, and Maurice Barrès, members of the Decadent movement who were in the public eye.In 1930 Italian art and literature critic Mario Praz completed a broad study of morbid and erotic literature, translated and published in English as "The Romantic Agony" (1933).