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.
One of the twelve sections is no more fifty words. The novel's decadent style inhabits the minds of several characters, particularly that of the tall, fragile, perpetually exhausted but secretly sexually voracious Antonia Mount. Her...
Intertextuality and Influence
Michael Field
From 1890 (when they were introduced to Walter Pater
and attended, along with Oscar Wilde
and Arthur Symons
, a lecture he gave) Katharine and Edith were deeply influenced in their writing by Pater.
Field, Michael, and William Rothenstein. Works and Days. Editors Moore, Thomas Sturge and D. C. Sturge Moore, J. Murray.
119-20
Intertextuality and Influence
Ada Leverson
AL
's style and reputation are bound up with those of Oscar Wilde
. Her biographer Charles Burkhart
accepts that Wilde was the catalyst of her writing career, though he insists that she does not...
Intertextuality and Influence
Natalie Clifford Barney
A brief encounter with Oscar Wilde
in early childhood made a deep impression on NCB
. In an interview near the end of her life, she said, when at fifteen I read Oscar Wilde's short...
Intertextuality and Influence
Ada Leverson
This dialogue brings together several fictional characters, including Wilde
's Salome, Ibsen
's Nora, Pinero
's Mrs Tanqueray, and Madame Santuzza from Mascagni
's opera Cavalleria Rusticana.
Burkhart, Charles. Ada Leverson. Twayne.
69
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
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...
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
Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
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.
