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.
Scholars argue that the destruction of KM
's reputation was completed by private knowledge of her erotic relationships with women. Hewett
not only spread information to Hapgood
about these relationships, but also ensured that Henry Labouchere
Who Was Who in Literature, 1906-1934. Gale Research, 1979, 2 vols.
vol. 1
She also belonged to the Society of Authors
, and acted as a steward (along with over a hundred other luminaries including Walter Besant
Literary responses
Violet Fane
Oscar Wilde
called Hazely Heatha beautiful gem.
Wilde, Oscar. The Letters of Oscar Wilde. Editor Hart-Davis, Rupert, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1962.
211
According to Dorothea Mosley Thompson
's entry in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, many of these poems address the trite themes of the period (which...
Literary responses
Florence Farr
Dorothy Shakespear
commented on the novel in a letter to Ezra Pound
: Such a Sargasso Sea muddle. Every body divorced several times, & in the end going back to their originals: & a young...
Literary responses
Frances Burney
The reanimation of FB
's comedies is a happy story. Tara Ghoshal Wallace
edited A Busy Day in paperback in 1984. A fringe production performed in Bristol in 1993, then in Islington, London, in...
Literary responses
Viola Tree
Novelist Ada Leverson
(a close friend of Oscar Wilde
) wrote a parody of VT
's question-and-answer format (from the column, not the book, which appeared after her death), which mocks both VT and the...
Literary responses
Michael Field
In a letter, George Meredith
called MF
's characterization of Mary an arresting study..
qtd. in
Field, Michael, and William Rothenstein. Works and Days. Editors Moore, Thomas Sturge and D. C. Sturge Moore, J. Murray, 1933.
71
He said he hoped that neither woman had been wounded by a most unjust review in the press.
qtd. in
Field, Michael, and William Rothenstein. Works and Days. Editors Moore, Thomas Sturge and D. C. Sturge Moore, J. Murray, 1933.
70
Literary responses
Lady Colin Campbell
The Saturday Review found its contributor's protagonist to be vigorously drawn and harmoniously developed and compacted of simple and healthy aspirations.
Saturday Review. Chawton.
68.1773 (19 October 1889): 436
The publicity from LCC
's recent divorce trial contributed...
Literary responses
Charlotte Stopes
A more recent Shakespeare scholar, Samuel Schoenbaum
patronisingly attributes her employment by the Athenæum not to her own merit but to a journalistic coup in ingratiating herself with the management.
George Meredith
thought the play would act well but added this criticism: I do not find in your dramatic prose the complete ring that there is in the sound and volume of your blank verse...
Literary responses
Constance Naden
William R. Hughes
provided for the Midland Naturalist a review of this book which CN
called kind.
Hughes, William Richard et al. Constance Naden: A Memoir. Bickers and Son, 1890.
38-9
. The Woman's World (edited by Oscar Wilde
) gave the book one of its several...
Literary responses
Ivy Compton-Burnett
During the early part of ICB
's career she was little regarded or understood. Raymond Mortimer
was one of the first to perceive her quality, and she quickly began to attract the attention of younger...
Literary responses
Rosamund Marriott Watson
Oscar Wilde
's review of this collection for The Woman's World called RMWone of our most artistic workers in poetry.
qtd. in
Hughes, Linda K. “A Woman Poet Angling for Notice: Rosamund Marriott Watson”. Marketing the Author: Authorial Personae, Narrative Selves and Self-Fashioning, 1880-1930, edited by Marysa Demoor and Marysa Demoor, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp. 134-55.
139
In 1902William Archer
called the collection less mature than her later volumes...
Literary responses
Ada Leverson
Wilde
, who thought highly of AL
's work, praised her Minx before publication (as most brilliant, but should be longer),
Leverson, Ada, and Oscar Wilde. “Reminiscences of the Author”. Letters to the Sphinx from Oscar Wilde, Duckworth, 1930, pp. 19-49.
50
and a dialogue (as brilliant and delightful and dangerous).
Leverson, Ada, and Oscar Wilde. “Reminiscences of the Author”. Letters to the Sphinx from Oscar Wilde, Duckworth, 1930, pp. 19-49.
52
In...
Literary responses
May Sinclair
Reviews were almost all positive.
Raitt, Suzanne. May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian. Clarendon Press, 2000.
255
Writing in the Dial in September 1922, T. S. Eliot
used this novel as the most notable example of the psychoanalytical type which, however, he disapproved in principle. Its...
