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.
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
Leisure and Society
Kate Marsden
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
Literary responses
Arabella Shore
Oscar Wilde
offered slightly faint praise. AS
, he wrote, had tried to guide modern readers through Dante's great poem as Virgil
guided Dante through the afterworld, and her modest literary guide-book was unlike many...
Literary responses
Mary Augusta Ward
The novel was a massive success, in the words of Henry Jamesa momentous public event.
qtd. in
Ward, Mary Augusta. “Introduction”. Robert Elsmere, edited by Rosemary Ashton, Oxford University Press, 1987, p. vii - xviii.
vii
Critic John Sutherland deems it the best-selling work of quality fiction in the nineteenth century. By the summer...
Literary responses
Amy Levy
The Jewish press was outraged by what it saw as the antisemitism of this novel. The Jewish Chronicle did not review it, but implied strong disapprobation in an article entitled Critical Jews. The Jewish...
Literary responses
Julia Constance Fletcher
Wilde
said of Fleming's first two novels: she writes as cleverly as she talks,
Again Henry James
reviewed the book. He mentioned neither his earlier review of the same author, nor his personal acquaintance with...
Literary responses
Amy Levy
After AL
's premature death, much comment focussed on the possible causes of her suicide. But some critics focussed on her writing, notably Oscar Wilde
in The Woman's World. To write thus at six-and-twenty...
Literary responses
Ethel M. Arnold
Quoting Oscar Wilde
in a discussion of the new Victorian woman, scholar Ann Ardis
describes Susan and Ronald's relationship as providing both parties intellectual friction to rouse [one] up to talk and think
Ardis, Ann. “New Women and the New Hellenism”. The New Woman in Fiction and in Fact, edited by Angelique Richardson and Chris Willis, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, pp. 107-22.
117
With...
Literary responses
Jane Francesca Lady Wilde
The future JFLW
's early verse inspired many to submit articles to the Nation.
Wyndham, Horace. Speranza. T. V. Boardman, 1951.
27-8
Charles Duffy
described her writing as a substantial force in Irish politics, the vehement will of a woman of...
Literary responses
Victoria Cross
Sewell Stokes
, in a brief portrait of VC
in 1928, described her as one who had at one time been accused of poisoning the purity of British homes with her sordid writings ....
Literary responses
Violet Fane
Oscar Wilde
wrote to request a copy so that he could review it for The Woman's World.
Wilde, Oscar. The Letters of Oscar Wilde. Editor Hart-Davis, Rupert, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1962.
238
Literary responses
Alison Uttley
The fairy-story volume Mustard, Pepper and Salt, published in October 1938, was much better reviewed than AU
had become accustomed to; Books of Today likened the contents to Oscar Wilde
's fairy-tales.
Judd, Denis. Alison Uttley. Michael Joseph, 1986.
154
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, 1998.
220
Since...
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...
