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 Ambassador proved to be JOH
's most successful dramatic work. On opening night, when the delighted audience called for the author, many of them were staggered at the appearance on stage of a young...
Reception
Lucy Walford
LW
's relation Mary was also an acquaintance of an unnamed aunt of Oscar Wilde
's. LW
reports the aunt as having had little confidence in her nephew, believing he would never make a name...
Reception
Vernon Lee
One of the first and most appreciative readers of VL
's work was John Addington Symonds
, a leading cultural historian of the time. Her book also brought her the notice and friendship of other...
Reception
Vernon Lee
This book lost Lee the friendship of others who had admired her Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy. Broken friendships included those with Oscar Wilde
(refigured as the character Posthlethwaite), Jane
and William Morris
Residence
John Strange Winter
She became an active member of the community, encouraging English visitors through her writing, and retaining a summer house there even after the family returned to London in 1901. In 1897 the townspeople, appreciative of...
Residence
Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
During her early married years, Jane Francesca Wilde
lived at 21 Westland Row, Dublin. Some time after the birth of her son Oscar
but before 24 November 1855, the family moved to the more...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Rigby
Scholars Mitchell
and Broomfield
observe that like Kant
before her and Oscar Wilde
after, Eastlake sought to define a realm of human experience to and for which only art could speak, whereas Ruskin believed that...
Textual Features
Violet Fane
Titles include Hazely Heath (a sonnet which had first appeared in the inaugural issue of Wilde
's The Woman's World in November 1887) and The Mer-Baby (which Wilde persuaded her to contribute in August 1888)...
Textual Features
Nancy Cunard
In fact, it was part of the effort of the early modernists to break free of the cosy escapism which had befallen English verse after the trial of Oscar Wilde
. The Wheels group took...
Textual Features
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
The slight psychological interest of this story is overshadowed, however, by a fascination with Helen's rescuer, aesthete and poet Daniel Lester, who in his larger-than-life physical presence and flamboyant personality is patently Wilde
. Lester...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Passages in The Lover's Companion are grouped according to different kinds of love situation (first love, love at first sight, unrequited love, etc.). Authors used include Jane Austen
, Anthony Trollope
, Oscar Wilde
,...
Textual Features
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
The novel recounts Lester's life from his childhood as the youngest of four sons (a superfluity; he was matter in the wrong place
Braddon, Mary Elizabeth. The Rose of Life. Brentano’s.
35
) and the emergence of his adult persona by the...
Textual Features
Ella D'Arcy
It reverses the traditional story of a male philanderer rejected by a pure-minded woman. Lulie Thayer, an American girl, pursues, loves, and drops every man she meets. She is an adventuress . . . but...
Textual Features
Rhoda Broughton
Critics have pointed to a range of influences and allusions in this novel. Kate Flint
has suggested that the representation of the sorrowful-eyed aesthete Francis Chaloner was a satiric jab at Oscar Wilde
, who...
Textual Features
Ella Hepworth Dixon
EHD
depicts Oscar Wilde
as the jealous, selfish, and corrupt dramatist Gilbert Vincent in The World's Slow Stain. Envious of one-time novelist Adela Buller's marriage to the lover who had formerly rejected her, Gilbert...