Although Peter Altenberg enjoyed high esteem among writers as diverse as the brothers Mann, Robert Musil, Karl Kraus, Franz Kafka, and Gerhart Hauptmann, he has found little favor with the literary-critical establishment. For more than twenty years, however, this author of delightfully varied and often acute prose poems, vignettes, and short sketches was a central figure in Vienna during a period of cultural efflorescence unparalleled in modern times. Probably the most obviously "impressionistic" of all the creative writers in Austria at the turn of the century, Altenberg attracted a wide readership across the German-speaking lands and had almost all of his books published by the prestigious S. Fischer publishing house in Berlin. Described in the Hamburg newspaper Die Zeit (29 March 1985) as "die wahre Eminenz Wiens" (the true eminence of Vienna) and renowned as much for his outrageous life-style and mode of dress as for his literary prowess, Altenberg...