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, 1985.
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, 1969.
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.
"Oscar Wilde" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Oscar_Wilde_%281854-1900%29_1889%2C_May_23._Picture_by_W._and_D._Downey.jpg.
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...
Textual Production
Sybille Bedford
SB
began reviewing for the New York Review of Books by 1963, and covered a wide range of genres: literary history (a book on Oscar Wilde
), fiction (Graham Greene
), travel writing (...
Textual Production
Marghanita Laski
The programme considered contemporary political and social subjects through the lens of historical and classical literary texts by, for instance Shakespeare
, Byron
, Shaw
, and Wilde
. It was shown on Sunday evenings.
Lewisohn, Mark. “Dig This Rhubarb”. The bbc.co.uk Guide to Comedy.
Textual Production
Dodie Smith
Its title alludes to Oscar Wilde
's A Woman of No Importance.
Grove, Valerie. Dear Dodie: The Life of Dodie Smith. Chatto and Windus, 1996.
280
DS
's American publisher, Little, Brown
was shocked at the novel's homosexual content and its likely impact on her readership. They...
Textual Production
Julia Constance Fletcher
JCF titled her second novel (this time published as G. F., in three volumes) Mirage, dedicated to Walter Pater
: it is known chiefly for its portrait of the young Oscar Wilde
.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Fitzsimons, Eleanor. Wilde’s Women: How Oscar Wilde Was Shaped by the Women He Knew. Abrams Press, 2016.
76
Textual Production
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
MEB
published (as M.E. Braddon) her novel The Rose of Life, which fictionalises aspects of the life and trial of her friend Oscar Wilde
.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
ES
wrote by hand a long letter from Bow Street Police Court to C. P. Scott
, editor of the Manchester Guardian and thus her employer, in the light of her probably fast-approaching incarceration.
The...
Textual Production
Louisa May Alcott
LMA
's writings were often printed serially before their volume publication. Periodicals such as the Atlantic Monthly, the Saturday Evening Gazette, the Christian Union, the Boston Commonwealth, the Flag of our...
Textual Production
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
MEB
continued after this to maintain a rate of about one new novel a year. In Gerard, which appeared in 1891, she combined elements from Goethe
's Faust with others from Balzac
's La...
Textual Production
Evelyn Sharp
Within a year of reaching Londonon the crest of the wave that was sweeping away Victorian tradition,
Sharp, Evelyn. Unfinished Adventure. John Lane, Bodley Head, 1933.
56
ES
found herself attached to the group of writers that had formed around The Yellow Book...
Textual Production
Jane Francesca Lady Wilde
Biographer Joy Melville
notes that a bibliography of Swedenborg's work lists Speranza as the translator but, pages later denies her this role. In his biography of Oscar Wilde
, Richard Ellmann
credits her with the...
Textual Production
Evelyn Sharp
ES
was sustaining an extremely high rate of publication at the turn of the century. Her books for children included The Other Boy, 1902 (a comment on the sexual panic flowing from the Oscar Wilde
Textual Production
Jane Francesca Lady Wilde
While pregnant with her second son this year, she found writing a difficult fit with her family life. She expressed in her letters a suspicion that her heart had cooled down into such a dull...
Textual Production
Ada Leverson
The Green Carnation, a novel caricaturing Oscar Wilde
, appeared anonymously and was thought by Wilde to be by AL
: its author was actually Robert Hichens
.
Burkhart, Charles. Ada Leverson. Twayne, 1973.
22
Textual Production
Katherine Mansfield
Stories she designed for particular sets of readers around this time, especially those for the Fabian New Age, show the edge of professionalism. She had already written bowdlerised versions of Baudelaire
and Wilde
...
