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.
The First World War is an important theme in this novel; Edith Ottley's guests find it hard to talk about anything else. Aylmer has returned into Edith's life as a wounded war hero. She decides...
Friends, Associates
Ada Leverson
Oscar Wilde
, virtually homeless in the limbo following his first trial, went to stay with AL
and her husband
; his wife
visited him at their house.
AL
(who may or may not have been already acquainted with Oscar Wilde
) published in the humorous magazine PunchAn Afternoon Party, a parody of his Dorian Gray.
Burkhart, Charles. Ada Leverson. Twayne.
149n7, 69
Publishing
Amy Levy
AL
published articles in many periodicals, particularly the Cambridge Review (from 9 June 1880), Temple Bar (from the same year), the popular magazine London Society (from 1883), the Jewish Chronicle, the Star (from 3...
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
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...
Friends, Associates
Marie Belloc Lowndes
As a child she had already met several distinguished writers in England, and Mary Clarke Mohl
and Turgenev
in France.
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia. Macmillan.
369-70
As a young adult she quickly became known to many eminent members of the...
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
...
Family and Intimate relationships
Katherine Mansfield
These relationships coincided with KM
's reading of Oscar Wilde
. Maata Mahupuku, a Maori, had been at Miss Swainson's school with her, and they had later been together in London. Their friendship became passionate...
Cultural formation
Kate Marsden
Aspects of her identity shifted over time. KM
was born into an English, professional, presumably white family of the upper-middle class, who lost their financial security because of her father's early death. Protestant for much...
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
Textual Production
Ngaio Marsh
NM
's mother
played the witch, and her grandfather Edward William Seager
made a present to her of two theatrical treasures: a book entitled Actors of the [Nineteenth] Century by Frederic White
and a shirt...
Publishing
Charlotte Mew
The story was rejected by The Yellow Book in January 1895 as too long (although they had recently printed a longer story by Henry James
).
Stanford, Donald E., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 19. Gale Research.
309
Fitzgerald, Penelope. Charlotte Mew and Her Friends. Collins, p. 240 pp.
