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.
GE
's realism was influenced by the Scandinavian authors she had read while living in Norway, including Ibsen
, Strindberg
, and Björnson
.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Ledger, Sally. The New Woman. Manchester University Press.
193-4
Mix, Katherine Lyon. A Study in Yellow: <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl="j">The Yellow Book</span> and Its Contributors. Greenwood Press.
173
Yet her work was also informed by the...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Renault
Homosexuals in British fiction had been portrayed mostly as sick, funny, or both since the Oscar Wilde
trials (1895). E. M. Forster
had kept his Maurice unpublished. Radclyffe Hall
had run into trouble. Virginia Woolf
Intertextuality and Influence
Marjorie Bowen
MB
recalls being influenced at an early age by her enjoyment of Tennyson
's Idylls of the King, Wilde
's Picture of Dorian Gray, the novels of Sir Walter Scott
, and Richardson
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anna Letitia Barbauld
ALB
was a presence in the early poetry of Wordsworth
and Coleridge
, though they later distanced themselves from her so emphatically. Her work appeared in magazines in the USA before the end of the...
Health
E. Owens Blackburne
EOB
was blind for some years. She lost her sight at about eleven but regained it after an operation performed by Sir William R. Wilde
(father to Oscar
) when she was eighteen.
O’Donoghue, David James. The Poets of Ireland. Gale Research.
62
Boase, Frederic. Modern English Biography. F. Cass.
Health
Viola Tree
Shortly after her wedding, in September 1912, VT
went back to Italy to resume voice training, but difficulty with her throat left her unable to sing. She tried a number of different remedies but none...
Friends, Associates
John Strange Winter
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...
At the age of six, NCB
had a chance encounter with Oscar Wilde
at an American seaside resort. He helped her escape from some children who were chasing her, and then sat her on his...
Friends, Associates
Rhoda Broughton
RB
's vitality, sincerity, and pungent wit gained her the friendship of some of the most notable people of her day.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Her wide circle of friends and acquaintances included Henry James
(the two became extremely...
Friends, Associates
Ada Leverson
AL
's first meeting with Oscar Wilde
is variously dated 1892 or 1893. They became very close, exchanging compliments, paradoxes, and flattery.
Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. Viking.
392
Burkhart, Charles. Ada Leverson. Twayne.
21
She was a tower of strength to him at the time...
Friends, Associates
Alice Meynell
Following her early conquest of Tennyson
, AM
went on to develop a large circle of literary acquaintances. Callers on the Meynells at Palace Court included Irish writer Katharine Tynan
, Aubrey Beardsley
(while he...
In England she also formed close friendships and intellectual bonds with feminist and socialist intellectual Eleanor Marx
, barrister and mathematics professor Karl Pearson
, and socialist pioneer Edward Carpenter
. Others she met in...