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.
MB
recalls being influenced at an early age by her enjoyment of Tennyson
's Idylls of the King, Wilde
's Picture of Dorian Gray, the novels of Sir Walter Scott
, and Richardson
Intertextuality and Influence
Marie Corelli
The novel is an indictment of the Decadent Movement for its immorality and sensationalism, yet critic Annette R. Federico
notes that the antidecadent novel is packaged as the very flower of decadence, even down to...
Intertextuality and Influence
George Egerton
GE
's realism was influenced by the Scandinavian authors she had read while living in Norway, including Ibsen
, Strindberg
, and Björnson
.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Ledger, Sally. The New Woman. Manchester University Press.
193-4
Mix, Katherine Lyon. A Study in Yellow: <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl="j">The Yellow Book</span> and Its Contributors. Greenwood Press.
173
Yet her work was also informed by the...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Renault
Homosexuals in British fiction had been portrayed mostly as sick, funny, or both since the Oscar Wilde
trials (1895). E. M. Forster
had kept his Maurice unpublished. Radclyffe Hall
had run into trouble. Virginia Woolf
Intertextuality and Influence
Antonia White
AW
longed to be a writer from an early age. At her convent school, aged nearly fourteen, under the influence of illicit reading of Francis Thompson
and Wilde
's Dorian Gray, she wrote three...
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...
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.
FSH
was also a close friend of her fellow-Catholic Edmund Downey
. Her husband was a friend of Richard Holt Hutton
, joint editor of The Spectator. She recalled, at the time of his...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Robins
ER
's first few years in London brought her into contact with several important literary and theatre figures, including Henry James
, Oscar Wilde
, actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree
, and actress Ellen Terry
...
Friends, Associates
Natalie Clifford Barney
At the age of six, NCB
had a chance encounter with Oscar Wilde
at an American seaside resort. He helped her escape from some children who were chasing her, and then sat her on his...
Friends, Associates
John Strange Winter
JSW
had an extensive social circle in London—her biographer, Oliver Bainbridge
, notes that a number of social claims were made upon her by reason of her popularity, and that these were always in advance...