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.
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.
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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates John Strange Winter
JSW had an extensive social circle in London—her biographer, Oliver Bainbridge , notes that a number of social claims were made upon her by reason of her popularity, and that these were always in advance...
Residence John Strange Winter
She became an active member of the community, encouraging English visitors through her writing, and retaining a summer house there even after the family returned to London in 1901. In 1897 the townspeople, appreciative of...
Intertextuality and Influence Antonia White
AW longed to be a writer from an early age. At her convent school, aged nearly fourteen, under the influence of illicit reading of Francis Thompson and Wilde 's Dorian Gray, she wrote three...
Friends, Associates Rosamund Marriott Watson
She forged friendships with other women writers, including Mona Caird , E. Nesbit , Mathilde Blind , Amy Levy , and Alice Meynell . She was also a friend of William Sharp , Austin Dobson
Literary responses Rosamund Marriott Watson
Oscar Wilde 's review of this collection for The Woman's World called RMWone of our most artistic workers in poetry.
Hughes, Linda K. “A Woman Poet Angling for Notice: Rosamund Marriott Watson”. Marketing the Author: Authorial Personae, Narrative Selves and Self-Fashioning, 1880-1930, edited by Marysa Demoor and Marysa Demoor, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 134-55.
139
In 1902William Archer called the collection less mature than her later volumes...
Textual Features Rosamund Marriott Watson
RMW 's leadership and personal aesthetics steered the periodical towards the arts, while still keeping intact established columns on domestic topics, such as gardening, needlework, cookery and fashion.
Hughes, Linda K. “A Female Aesthete at the Helm: Sylvia’s Journal and ’Graham R. Tomson’, 1893-1894”. Victorian Periodical Review, Vol.
29
, No. 2, pp. 173-92.
175
Pages teemed with poetry and fiction...
Friends, Associates Mary Augusta Ward
She met a number of important writers through her newspaper work. She associated with Alexander Macmillan , Sir George Grove , Edmund Gosse and his wife Ellen , John Morley , and her uncle Matthew Arnold
Literary responses Mary Augusta Ward
The novel was a massive success, in the words of Henry Jamesa momentous public event.
Ward, Mary Augusta. “Introduction”. Robert Elsmere, edited by Rosemary Ashton, Oxford University Press, p. vii - xviii.
vii
Critic John Sutherland deems it the best-selling work of quality fiction in the nineteenth century. By the summer...
Reception Lucy Walford
LW 's relation Mary was also an acquaintance of an unnamed aunt of Oscar Wilde 's. LW reports the aunt as having had little confidence in her nephew, believing he would never make a name...
Friends, Associates Ethel Lilian Voynich
Stepniak and his work, including Underground Russia, 1883, were influential in ELV 's personal life and career.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Gray, Anne, and Pam Blevins. The World of Women in Classical Music. WordWorld Publications, pp. 876-7.
876
He taught her Russian, pushed her to continue writing, and was the first to introduce her...
Literary responses Alison Uttley
The fairy-story volume Mustard, Pepper and Salt, published in October 1938, was much better reviewed than AU had become accustomed to; Books of Today likened the contents to Oscar Wilde 's fairy-tales.
Judd, Denis. Alison Uttley. Michael Joseph.
154
Publishing Katharine Tynan
KT wrote a series of articles on Women of the Poets for Oscar Wilde 's journal The Woman's World
Tynan, Katharine. The Middle Years. Constable.
37
Friends, Associates Katharine Tynan
Among those who frequented KT 's salon were George Russell (Æ), Irish Nationalist and Fenian leader John O'Leary , Gaelic scholar and revivalist Douglas Hyde (founder of the Gaelic League , 1893), and George Sigerson
Family and Intimate relationships Iris Tree
Writer, critic, and caricaturist Sir Max Beerbohm was IT 's half-uncle, the youngest son from Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's father's second marriage. Best remembered for his drawings and caricatures of the famous, Beerbohm also wrote...
Family and Intimate relationships Viola Tree
Throughout her life, VT took direction from her father, the actor-manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree , who had abandoned his job in the family corn-trading business to pursue a career on stage, and had changed...

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...

Writing climate item

November 1886

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

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

Writing climate item

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...

Writing climate item

April 1894

The aesthetic quarterly the Yellow Book began publication.

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

Writing climate item

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.