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.
In London JFLW
associated with writers such as Marie Corelli
, Ouida
, and Violet Hunt
. Oscar
, an emerging celebrity, introduced his mother to the city's artistic circle.
ER
's first few years in London brought her into contact with several important literary and theatre figures, including Henry James
, Oscar Wilde
, actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree
, and actress Ellen Terry
...
Friends, Associates
Frances Sarah Hoey
FSH
was also a close friend of her fellow-Catholic Edmund Downey
. Her husband was a friend of Richard Holt Hutton
, joint editor of The Spectator. She recalled, at the time of his...