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.
These relationships coincided with KM
's reading of Oscar Wilde
. Maata Mahupuku, a Maori, had been at Miss Swainson's school with her, and they had later been together in London. Their friendship became passionate...
Family and Intimate relationships
Dorothy Richardson
Odle illustrated editions of Voltaire
's Candide, Swift
's Gulliver's Travels, Wilde
's The Sphinx, and Twain
's 1601, among others; his images also appeared in such periodicals as The Gypsy...
Family and Intimate relationships
Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
Jane Francesca Wilde
(Speranza) gave birth to her elder son, named Willie
; he died in 1899 while his brother Oscar
was in prison.
Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. Knopf.
16
Glendinning, Victoria. “Speranza: A Leaning Tower of Courage”. Genius in the Drawing-Room, edited by Peter Quennell, Weidenfield and Nicolson, pp. 101-16.
113
Family and Intimate relationships
Edith Templeton
She said years later: In truth, I would have married any Englishman. The marriage turned out badly. One of their rows was provoked by his discovering her in possession of a book by Oscar Wilde
Family and Intimate relationships
Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
Oscar Wilde
, son of JFLW
, stayed with her in Chelsea after being released on bail following his arrest in April.
Glendinning, Victoria. “Speranza: A Leaning Tower of Courage”. Genius in the Drawing-Room, edited by Peter Quennell, Weidenfield and Nicolson, pp. 101-16.
112
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...
Family and Intimate relationships
Florence Dixie
Florence's eldest brother, Lord John
, later became the notorious ninth Marquess of Queensberry, father of Lord Alfred Douglas
. It was he who destroyed Oscar Wilde
by bringing the court case against him.
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...
Her second child, the famous Oscar Wilde
was born on 16 October 1854.
Leighton, Angela, and Margaret Reynolds, editors. Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology. Blackwell.
292
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...
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Hunt
VH
and Wilde
talked for two hours and by her own admission she fell a little in love.
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster.
43
Throughout the following year Wilde called on her regularly and they corresponded; he also wrote to...
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...
Friends, Associates
Evelyn Sharp
ES
wrote later that at no time in her life did she make intimate friends easily. Most people she had to do with she liked up to a certain point only, but she could count...
27 March 1958: The Belgrade Theatre in Coventry was the...
Building item
27 March 1958
The Belgrade Theatre
in Coventry was the first theatre built in Britain after the war.
1966: US cultural critic Susan Sontag published...
Writing climate item
1966
US cultural critic Susan Sontag
published Against Interpretation, her first essay collection. The title piece, On Style, and Notes on Camp (dedicated to Oscar Wilde
and exploring the idea of life as theatre)...
30 November 2000: The age of consent all over Britain was set...
Building item
30 November 2000
The age of consent all over Britain was set at sixteen for either heterosexual or homosexual relations.
14 July 2006: The Bow Street Magistrates Court, one of...
Building item
14 July 2006
The Bow Street Magistrates Court
, one of London's most famous courts, closed after dispensing justice for 267 years.