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.
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.
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...
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.
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
Novelist Ada Leverson
(a close friend of Oscar Wilde
) wrote a parody of VT
's question-and-answer format (from the column, not the book, which appeared after her death), which mocks both VT and the...
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...
Timeline
Around 1878: The Albemarle Club was formed with the plan...
Building item
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...
Building item
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...
Building item
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...
1885: Breaking with established department store...
Building item
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...
Writing climate item
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...
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...
Building item
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.