Oscar Wilde

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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.
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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.
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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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Louisa May Alcott
LMA 's writings were often printed serially before their volume publication. Periodicals such as the Atlantic Monthly, the Saturday Evening Gazette, the Christian Union, the Boston Commonwealth, the Flag of our...
Education Diana Athill
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...
Intertextuality and Influence Anna Letitia Barbauld
ALB was a presence in the early poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge , though they later distanced themselves from her so emphatically. Her work appeared in magazines in the USA before the end of the...
Author summary Natalie Clifford Barney
Natalie Clifford Barney , though American, is best known as a Paris salonnière. She specialized in memoirs and pensées, though she also produced poetry, drama, novels, essays, and dialogues. Writing primarily in French but also...
Friends, Associates Natalie Clifford Barney
At the age of six, NCB had a chance encounter with Oscar Wilde at an American seaside resort. He helped her escape from some children who were chasing her, and then sat her on his...
Family and Intimate relationships Natalie Clifford Barney
While she never seriously entertained the proposals of most of her suitors, she seems to have considered at least one as a possible candidate for husband: Lord Alfred Douglas , who is notorious as the...
Family and Intimate relationships Natalie Clifford Barney
This relationship is the focus of Diane Souhami's Wild Girls (2004). Barney assiduously promoted her partner's work for forty years, ultimately finding it an archival home and ensuring the publication of a well-illustrated account of...
Intertextuality and Influence Natalie Clifford Barney
A brief encounter with Oscar Wilde in early childhood made a deep impression on NCB . In an interview near the end of her life, she said, when at fifteen I read Oscar Wilde's short...
Publishing Natalie Clifford Barney
The book was published by Ollendorff in Paris, with a frontispiece by Carolus Duran : a portrait of NCB posing as Wilde 's Happy Prince.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Chalon, Jean. Portrait of a Seductress: The World of Natalie Barney. Translator Barko, Carol, Crown.
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Elliott, Bridget, and Jo-Ann Wallace. Women Artists and Writers: Modernist (im)positionings. Routledge.
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Theme or Topic Treated in Text Natalie Clifford Barney
The first half, devoted to men, describes NCB 's encounters with Oscar Wilde , Anatole France , Remy de Gourmont , Marcel Proust , Gabriele D'Annunzio , Max Jacob , and others. The second part...
Textual Features Natalie Clifford Barney
In L'amour défenduNCB defends the proposition that only love is important, not the sex to whom it is directed.
Barney, Natalie Clifford, and Karla Jay. A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney. Translator Anna Livia, New Victoria Publishers.
85
She argues that every person possesses both masculine and feminine principles: We should not...
Textual Production Sybille Bedford
SB began reviewing for the New York Review of Books by 1963, and covered a wide range of genres: literary history (a book on Oscar Wilde ), fiction (Graham Greene ), travel writing (...
Health E. Owens Blackburne
EOB was blind for some years. She lost her sight at about eleven but regained it after an operation performed by Sir William R. Wilde (father to Oscar ) when she was eighteen.
O’Donoghue, David James. The Poets of Ireland. Gale Research.
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Boase, Frederic. Modern English Biography. F. Cass.
Intertextuality and Influence Mathilde Blind
MB 's rendering contributed to making the journal a sensation in England, and a major influence on a generation and more of English journal writers, including Katherine Mansfield . It is, indirectly, the inspiration for...
Intertextuality and Influence Marjorie Bowen
MB recalls being influenced at an early age by her enjoyment of Tennyson 's Idylls of the King, Wilde 's Picture of Dorian Gray, the novels of Sir Walter Scott , and Richardson

Timeline

Around 1878: The Albemarle Club was formed with the plan...

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Around 1878

The Albemarle Club was formed with the plan of admitting equal numbers of men and women.

1881: Lady Harberton founded the Rational Dress...

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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...

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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.

1883: L. R. S. Tomalin, an early disciple of Gustave...

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1883

L. R. S. Tomalin , an early disciple of Gustave Jaeger 's woollen movement, set up the Jaeger Company in Fore Street, London, to sell Dr Jaeger's Sanitary Woollen Clothing..

1885: Breaking with established department store...

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1885

Breaking with established department store practice, Harrods began to offer credit to select customers.

4 March 1885: In Marius the Epicurean, Walter Pater established...

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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 magazine Lady's World: A Magazine...

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November 1886

The monthly magazineLady's World: A Magazine of Fashion and Society began publication.

1893: An anonymous imprint of the homoerotic novel...

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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...

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April 1894

The aesthetic quarterly the Yellow Book began publication.

After 25 May 1895: Following the conviction of Oscar Wilde,...

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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.

1903: Woman's World began publication in Londo...

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1903

Woman's World began publication in London.

1907: The London County Council banned stage tableaus...

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1907

The London County Council banned stage tableaus or living pictures (erotic in content), and in their place the Palace Theatre engaged Maud Allan as a solo dancer.

1909: The Guild of St Matthew (set up by Stewart...

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1909

The Guild of St Matthew (set up by Stewart Headlam in 1877 to promote Christian socialism) was dissolved.

By 27 February 1911: The secretary of the Actresses' Franchise...

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By 27 February 1911

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...

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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.

Texts

Wilde, Oscar. Collected Works. Editor Ross, Robert, Musson, 1909.
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.