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, 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.
Black and white photograph of Oscar Wilde sitting

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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 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 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 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.
Schoenbaum, Samuel. Shakespeare’s Lives. Clarendon Press, 1970.
640
She wrote, according to...
Literary responses Michael Field
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...
names Ada Leverson
  • BirthName: Ada Esther Beddington
    She did not use her second name, but it is mentioned by her biographer Charles Burkhart .
    Burkhart, Charles. Ada Leverson. Twayne, 1973.
    17

  • Nickname: Sphinx
    This name was given her by Oscar Wilde .

  • Married: Leverson
  • Pseudonyms: A Sensible Pessimist; Elaine
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.
qtd. in
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 199. Gale Research, 1999.
199: 298
In later years, when his literary fame increased, she...
Occupation Marie Corelli
From 1886, when she published her first novel, A Romance of Two Worlds, onward, MC produced books at great speed. She was an instant success, and throughout her life she sold approximately 100,000 books...

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