Oscar Wilde

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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.

Connections

Connections Author name Sort descending Excerpt
Friends, Associates André Gide
As well as his close acquaintance with members of the French avant-garde, AG was a friend of the British writers Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Bussy .
Friends, Associates Sarah Grand
Moving to London brought SG to the centre of the campaign for women's rights; there she met leading activists like Millicent Garrett Fawcett , Eva McClaren , Lady Elizabeth Cust , and Constance Wilde (wife...
Literary responses Sarah Grand
Elaine Showalter brought SG to the attention of late-twentieth-century New Woman and feminist criticism in A Literature of Their Own, 1977, where she discussed The Heavenly Twins and The Beth Book.
Mangum, Teresa. Married, Middlebrow, and Militant: Sarah Grand and the New Woman Novel. University of Michigan Press.
220
Since...
Characters Patricia Highsmith
In Ripley Under Water, 1991, on the other hand, Tom kills no-one directly, since a grotesque fatal accident removes the objects of his ire. But he and the reader are given recurring reminders of...
Reception John Oliver Hobbes
The Ambassador proved to be JOH 's most successful dramatic work. On opening night, when the delighted audience called for the author, many of them were staggered at the appearance on stage of a young...
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...
Textual Features Elizabeth Jane Howard
Passages in The Lover's Companion are grouped according to different kinds of love situation (first love, love at first sight, unrequited love, etc.). Authors used include Jane Austen , Anthony Trollope , Oscar Wilde ,...
politics Julia Ward Howe
In 1882 Oscar Wilde , making his lecture tour of the USA, spoke at the Boston Music Hall. While he was in Boston he made several visits to the Howe residence, and he also...
Family and Intimate relationships Violet Hunt
VH met Oscar Wilde for the first time.
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster.
43
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...
Textual Production Henry James
He had been too anxious to attend his own play, and arrived at the theatre only as the curtain fell, having attended instead a performance of Oscar Wilde 's An Ideal Husband. He wrote...
Author summary Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde , remains best known for her fierce Irish Nationalist poems published in the Nation under the pseudonym Speranza. She became known too for her translations of both poetry and fiction...
Occupation Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
She became so well-known as a writer that during her son Oscar 's 1882 American tour he was heralded simply as Speranza's Son.
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 199. Gale Research.
199: 298
In later years, when his literary fame increased, she...
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
Residence Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
During her early married years, Jane Francesca Wilde lived at 21 Westland Row, Dublin. Some time after the birth of her son Oscar but before 24 November 1855, the family moved to the more...

Timeline

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Texts

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