Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Oscar Wilde
-
Standard Name: Wilde, Oscar
Birth Name: Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
OW
's significance as poet, playwright, and writer of prose fiction, remained in eclipse for many years after his notorious trial and imprisonment in Reading Gaol
, events whose chilling impact on poetry and prose in England was not reversed until the modernists returned to the struggle for unfettered aesthetic expression. A leading proponent of art for art's sake in England, OW
was a follower of Walter Pater
, from whose work he borrows in lavish quantity, and, like Pater, he was much influenced by the French l'art pour l'art poets, notably Charles Baudelaire
and Théophile Gautier
.
Clements, Patricia. Baudelaire and the English Tradition. Princeton University Press, 1985.
140-83
More recently, his brilliant aesthetic essays have drawn serious attention as the basis for many critical propositions . . . which we like to attribute to more ponderous names.
Ellmann, Richard, editor. The Critic as Artist: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde. Random House, 1969.
x
His notoriety as a casualty of oppressive laws against the practice of homosexuality is also the subject of a good deal of recent critical comment.
Some of her essays and stories were also collected this year in volume 14 of The Writings of Oscar Wilde.
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 199. Gale Research, 1999.
199: 298
Characters
Patricia Highsmith
In Ripley Under Water, 1991, on the other hand, Tom kills no-one directly, since a grotesque fatal accident removes the objects of his ire. But he and the reader are given recurring reminders of...
Cultural formation
Anne Carson
As a teenager, AC
fancied herself a reborn Oscar Wilde.
Wachtel, Eleanor. “An Interview With Anne Carson”. Brick: A Literary Journal, No. 89, pp. 29-53.
30
She was drawn to Wilde's aesthetic sensibility and sense of irony. She shared this affectation with some of her highschool friends. They would...
Cultural formation
Dinah Mulock Craik
DMC
identified strongly as a working woman across established class boundaries. She wrote towards the end of her life to Oscar Wilde
, suggesting that he should alter the name of the monthly magazine he...
Cultural formation
Kate Marsden
Aspects of her identity shifted over time. KM
was born into an English, professional, presumably white family of the upper-middle class, who lost their financial security because of her father's early death. Protestant for much...
Cultural formation
Evelyn Sharp
ES
was an Englishwoman (and asserted that identity in the title of her autobiography) whose mother laid claim to Welsh and to distant Italian forebears. She described her family as urban middle-class, with artistic, musical...
death
Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
JFLW
, commonly known under her pen-name Speranza, died of complications from bronchitis while her son Oscar
was serving his prison sentence.
Glendinning, Victoria. “Speranza: A Leaning Tower of Courage”. Genius in the Drawing-Room, edited by Peter Quennell, Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1980, pp. 101-16.
113
Dedications
Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
The first edition's dedication to her sons Willie
and Oscar
says: I taught them, no doubt, / That country's a thing one should die for at need.
Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. Knopf, 1988.
4-5
Later editions published as Poems by Speranza...
Education
Anne Carson
When she was in highschool AC
's brother, four years older, liked her to do his homework for him.
DA
was taught at home by governesses (seven successively before she was sent to school), who followed a correspondence course designed for home schooling which was known as Parents Educational National Union
. A French...
Education
U. A. Fanthorpe
She later called her boarding school (where she was sent by her parents because of the heavy wartime bombing in their home area) inadequate,
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
and likened its staff to Oscar Wilde
's Lady Bracknell...
Family and Intimate relationships
E. B. C. Jones
Robert Ross
, journalist, art historian, and Roman Catholic convert, who is remembered principally as a friend of Oscar Wilde
, was her uncle.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/, http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Robert Baldwin Ross
Family and Intimate relationships
George Douglas
The eldest of GD
's brothers, John Sholto Douglas, the heir, became Marquess of Queensberry
at their father's early death. He later became notorious as the father of Lord Alfred Douglas
and the enemy of...
Family and Intimate relationships
Charlotte O'Conor Eccles
Sir William Wilde
, husband of Jane Francesca
and father of Oscar
, was a connection by marriage as well as a family friend.
The Albemarle Club
was formed with the plan of admitting equal numbers of men and women.
1881
Lady Harberton
founded the Rational Dress Society
which proposed dress reform for women, denounced tight-lacing and high heels, and advocated divided skirts.
By 24 December 1881
Lillie Langtry
became the first English society woman to appear professionally on the stage when she played Kate Hardcastle in Goldsmith
's She Stoops to Conquer at the Haymarket Theatre
, London.
Breaking with established department store practice, Harrods
began to offer credit to select customers.
4 March 1885
In Marius the Epicurean, Walter Pater
established his view that the city was the modern topic for writers. The novel is set in Marcus Aurelius
's Rome.
November 1886
The monthly magazineLady's World: A Magazine of Fashion and Society began publication.
1893
An anonymous imprint of the homoeroticnovelTeleny, in which Oscar Wilde
likely had a hand, was published in London by Leonard Smithers
.
April 1894
The aesthetic quarterly the Yellow Book began publication.
After 25 May 1895
Following the conviction of Oscar Wilde
, Edward Carpenter
's publisher broke his contract to publish Love's Coming of Age, after discovering that Carpenter had privately printed a pamphlet entitled Homogenic Love.
The secretary of the Actresses' Franchise League
organised a feminist production of Wilde
's Salome (reviewed on this date).
April 1918
An article in Noel Pemberton Billing
's weekly Vigilante alleged that the Germans had identified 47,000 Britons who could be blackmailed into treason because of their deviant sexuality.
Wilde, Oscar. Poems; with The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Methuen, 1909.
Leverson, Ada, and Oscar Wilde. “Reminiscences of the Author”. Letters to the Sphinx from Oscar Wilde, Duckworth, 1930, pp. 19-49.
Wilde, Oscar. The Artist As Critic. Editor Ellmann, Richard, Vintage Books.
Sharp, Elizabeth A. “The Author of ’John Halifax, Gentleman’”. The Woman’s World, edited by Oscar Wilde, Vol.
1
, pp. 111-14.
Wilde, Oscar. The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Leonard Smithers, 1898.
Wilde, Oscar. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Vol. 4, Criticism: Historical Criticism, Intentions, The Soul of Man. Editor Guy, Josephine M., Oxford University Press, 2007.
Wilde, Oscar. The Letters of Oscar Wilde. Editor Hart-Davis, Rupert, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1962.
