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.
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...
Family and Intimate relationships
Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
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
E. B. C. Jones
Robert Ross
, journalist, art historian, and Roman Catholic convert, who is remembered principally as a friend of Oscar Wilde
, was her uncle.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Robert Baldwin Ross
Family and Intimate relationships
George Douglas
The eldest of GD
's brothers, John Sholto Douglas, the heir, became Marquess of Queensberry
at their father's early death. He later became notorious as the father of Lord Alfred Douglas
and the enemy of...
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...
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.
and likened its staff to Oscar Wilde
's Lady Bracknell...
Education
Anne Carson
When she was in highschool AC
's brother, four years older, liked her to do his homework for him.
The first edition's dedication to her sons Willie
and Oscar
says: I taught them, no doubt, / That country's a thing one should die for at need.
Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. Knopf.
4-5
Later editions published as Poems by Speranza...
death
Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
JFLW
, commonly known under her pen-name Speranza, died of complications from bronchitis while her son Oscar
was serving his prison sentence.
Glendinning, Victoria. “Speranza: A Leaning Tower of Courage”. Genius in the Drawing-Room, edited by Peter Quennell, Weidenfield and Nicolson, pp. 101-16.
113
Cultural formation
Dinah Mulock Craik
DMC
identified strongly as a working woman across established class boundaries. She wrote towards the end of her life to Oscar Wilde
, suggesting that he should alter the name of the monthly magazine he...
Cultural formation
Kate Marsden
Aspects of her identity shifted over time. KM
was born into an English, professional, presumably white family of the upper-middle class, who lost their financial security because of her father's early death. Protestant for much...
Cultural formation
Evelyn Sharp
ES
was an Englishwoman (and asserted that identity in the title of her autobiography) whose mother laid claim to Welsh and to distant Italian forebears. She described her family as urban middle-class, with artistic, musical...
Cultural formation
Anne Carson
As a teenager, AC
fancied herself a reborn Oscar Wilde.
Wachtel, Eleanor. “An Interview With Anne Carson”. Brick: A Literary Journal, No. 89, pp. 29-53.
30
She was drawn to Wilde's aesthetic sensibility and sense of irony. She shared this affectation with some of her highschool friends. They would...
