1878-1901 US, United States
David Park Barnitz (June 24, 1878 – October 10, 1901) was an American poet, best known for his 1901 volume the Book of Jade, a classic of decadent poetry. In 1901, San Francisco bookseller William Doxey, publisher of the popular humorist Gelett Burgess, as well as many obscure, macabre (and sometimes decadent) authors, came to New York City. Two years before, his publishing enterprise, called "At the Sign of the Lark", had gone bankrupt. By February 1901, Doxey's new venture was bankrupt once again, but not before he had published—at its author's insistence, anonymously—a little-known masterpiece of decadent and nihilistic verse, entitled, simply, The Book of Jade.