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.
"Oscar Wilde" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Oscar_Wilde_%281854-1900%29_1889%2C_May_23._Picture_by_W._and_D._Downey.jpg.
JCF titled her second novel (this time published as G. F., in three volumes) Mirage, dedicated to Walter Pater
: it is known chiefly for its portrait of the young Oscar Wilde
.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Fitzsimons, Eleanor. Wilde’s Women: How Oscar Wilde Was Shaped by the Women He Knew. Abrams Press, 2016.
76
Literary responses
Julia Constance Fletcher
Wilde
said of Fleming's first two novels: she writes as cleverly as she talks,
Again Henry James
reviewed the book. He mentioned neither his earlier review of the same author, nor his personal acquaintance with...
Publishing
Julia Constance Fletcher
The full title was The Truth about Clement Ker: being an account of some curious circumstances connected with the life and death of the late Sir Clement Ker, Bart., of Brae House, Peeblesshire; told by...
Performance of text
Julia Constance Fletcher
The Sketch reported that the opening was attended by Fletcher herself, who appeared on stage after the curtain fell to acknowledge the enthusiastic applause of the audience, and by other luminaries including Oscar
and Constance Wilde
Friends, Associates
Julia Constance Fletcher
JCF met Oscar Wilde
, then an Oxford undergraduate on vacation, in Rome.
Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. Viking, 1987.
74-5
Friends, Associates
Julia Constance Fletcher
JCF arrived in Oxford just days after Oscar Wilde
had been announced the winner of the Newdigate Prize for his poem Ravenna; it was soon printed with a dedication To My Friend George Fleming.
From 1890 (when they were introduced to Walter Pater
and attended, along with Oscar Wilde
and Arthur Symons
, a lecture he gave) Katharine and Edith were deeply influenced in their writing by Pater.
Field, Michael, and William Rothenstein. Works and Days. Editors Moore, Thomas Sturge and D. C. Sturge Moore, J. Murray, 1933.
119-20
Literary responses
Michael Field
In a letter, George Meredith
called MF
's characterization of Mary an arresting study..
qtd. in
Field, Michael, and William Rothenstein. Works and Days. Editors Moore, Thomas Sturge and D. C. Sturge Moore, J. Murray, 1933.
71
He said he hoped that neither woman had been wounded by a most unjust review in the press.
qtd. in
Field, Michael, and William Rothenstein. Works and Days. Editors Moore, Thomas Sturge and D. C. Sturge Moore, J. Murray, 1933.
Field, Michael. “Introduction”. Sight and Song; with, Underneath the Bough, edited by R. K. R. Thornton and Ian Small, Woodstock Books, 1993.
Wilde had written to the authors with casting advice. He suggested they should have the theatre's founder, J. T. Grein
Literary responses
Michael Field
George Meredith
thought the play would act well but added this criticism: I do not find in your dramatic prose the complete ring that there is in the sound and volume of your blank verse...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Michael Field
Both Edith and Katharine contributed to this extraordinary journal, giving their impressions of travel, art, religion, death, and love. They also record encounters with their literary contemporaries, including Robert Browning
, George Meredith
, John Ruskin
Literary responses
Florence Farr
Dorothy Shakespear
commented on the novel in a letter to Ezra Pound
: Such a Sargasso Sea muddle. Every body divorced several times, & in the end going back to their originals: & a young...
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 et al., 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...
