Oscar Wilde: Criticism

Memoir & Biography
Critical Studies
General Commentary
Bibliographies

Plays on ... &c.
Contemporary articles
Individual Critics
Wilde Websites


The OScholars is a Wilde studies monthly edited by D. C. Rose at Goldsmiths College, London;
email: oscholarship@ireland.com.

See Conall Morrison and Alan Stanford discussing
The Importance on YouTube
Stanford plays Lady Bracknell in this three-hander version
- framed by Wilde’s remembrance in a Paris café.

Memoir & Biography
  • The Trial of Oscar Wilde from the shorthand reports (Paris: priv. printed [C. G.] 1906), xlix, 126pp; incls. "De Prfundis", a Criticism by Alfred Lord Douglas, 129-34; 8pp. publ. notices.; ltd. edn. 550 copies of which 50 on Japanese vellum; available online].
  • Ellen Terry, The Story of My Life (London: Hutchinson 1908).
  • Ford Madox Ford, Ancient Lights and Certain Reflections (London: Chapman & Hall 1911).
  • Arthur Ransome (Oscar Wilde, 1912), dedicated to Robert Ross with thanks to ‘many of those who knew Wilde [and] have helped me’ [implying that he himself hadn’t known Wilde].
  • Countess de Bremont, Oscar Wilde and His Mother (1911); Martin Birnbaum, Oscar Wilde, Fragments and Memories (1920).
  • Max Beerbohm, A Peep Into the Past ([priv.] 1923).
  • Wilfred Scawen Blunt, My Diaries (1928).
  • W. Graham Robertson, Time Was (London: Hamish Hamilton 1931).
  • Grant Richards, Memoirs of a Misspent Youth, 1872-1896 (London: Heinemann 1932).
  • Ellen Terry, Ellen Terry’s Memoirs (London: Victor Gollancz 1933).
  • Boris Brasil [var. Brasol, Brazol], Oscar Wilde (1938) [commended in Alfred Douglas’s Summing-Up, supra]; Marquess of Queensberry, in collaboration with Percy Colson, Oscar Wilde and the Black Douglas, foreword by H. Montgomery Hyde (London: Hutchinson [1949]), 181pp., front. port.
  • Margery Ross, Robert Ross: Friend of Friends (London: Jonathan Cape 1952).
  • H. Montgomery Hyde, Carson: The Life of Sir Edward Carson, Lord Carson of Duncairn (London: Heinemann 1953) [incl. account of Wilde trial (pp.131-44).
  • Rupert Croft Crooke, Bosie: The Story of Lord Alfred Douglas: His Friends and Enemies (London: W. H. Allen 1963).
  • Arthur Symons, The Memoirs of Arthur Symons: Life and Art in the 1890s (Pennsylvania UP 1977).
  • E. H. Mikhail, ed., Oscar Wilde: Interviews and Recollections, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan 1979) [includes Yeats, Autobiographies, pp.79-85; Katharine Tynan, Twenty-five Years Reminiscences (London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1913), pp.148-51.
  • André Gide, Oscar Wilde: In Memoriam [orig. Souvenirs ]; and [comments on] De Profundis, the translation being by Henry D. Davray, also Mercure de France n.d. (Mercure de France n.d.).
  • Eric Lambert, Mad with Much Heart: A Life of the Parents of Oscar Wilde (London: Muller 1967), 165pp., ill.
  • Brian Roberts, The Mad, Bad Line: The Family of Lord Alfred Douglas (London: Hamish Hamilton 1981).
  • Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde (London: Hamish Hamilton 1987), 632pp. Notes, p.555ff. Index, p.594ff. Do. [1st America Edn.] (NY: Knopf 1988), xvii, 680pp., ill. [32pp. of pls. ports], 25 cm. and Do. (London: Penguin 1988), xvi,632pp., ill. [32pp. of pls. ports. the standard biography].
  • Maureen Borland, Wilde’s Devoted Friend: A Life of Robert Ross (Oxford: Lennard Publishing 1990).
  • Joseph Pearce, The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde (London: HarperCollins 2000), 320pp.
  • Horst Schroeder, Additions and Corrections to Richard Ellmann’s “Oscar Wilde” (Braunschweig: priv. 1989), 82pp., and Do. [rev. & enl. 2nd Edn.] (Braunschweig: priv. 2002), xxi, 311pp.
  • Franny Moyle, The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs Oscar Wilde (London: John Murray 2011), 374pp.
  • Emer O’Sullivan, The Fall of the House of Wilde (London: Bloomsbury 2016), 495pp.,
  • Nicholas Frankel, Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years (Harvard UP 2017), 384pp.
  • Laurie Lee, Oscar’s Ghost: The battle for Oscar Wilde’s Legacy (London: Amberley 2017), 400pp.

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The plots of Wilde’s plays are summarised in British Writers, Vol. V (1982);see also Peter Kavanagh, The Irish Theatre (Tralee 1946).
Critical Studies
  • Robert H[arborough] Sherard, Oscar Wilde: The Story of an Unhappy Friendship (1902), and Do . [pop. edn.] (London: Greening & Co. 1908), 270pp., front. port., 5 pls.
  • Robert H. Sherard, The Life of Oscar Wilde (London: T. Werner Laurie 1906), 470pp., front. port., 24 ills. [incl. “Iacta Alea est” [by Lady Wilde] and a chap. contrib. by a jailer at Reading; also Appendix [pp.427-48]: Wilde at Chickering Hall; lecture in English provinces on the “House beautiful”; Dublin lecture on “The value of art in modern life”; Dublin lecture on “Dress”; Bibliography, pp.449-64].
  • Stuart Mason, trans. and intro., Oscar Wilde: A Study, from the French of André Gide (Oxford: Holywell Press 1905) [ltd. Edn. 500], 110pp., with Notes & Bibl.
  • R. H. Sherard, Oscar Wilde: A Biography (NY 1906).
  • Stuart Mason [Christopher Millard], ed., Oscar Wilde: Art and Morality - A Defence of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (London: J. Jacobs 1908), 160pp. [details].
  • Franz Blei, André Gide, Ernest La Jeunesse [English trans. 1951], with Arthur Symons, Recollections of Oscar Wilde (Cambridge UP 1906).
  • Leonard Cresswell Ingleby [Cyril Arthur Gull], Oscar Wilde (London: T. Werner Laurie 1907).
  • T. W. H. Crosland, The First Stone, on reading the unpublished parts of ‘De Profundis’ (priv. 1912), 30pp. [savage attack in verse].
  • Ingleby, Oscar Wilde: Some Reminiscences (London: T. Werner Laurie 1912).
  • Arthur Ransome, Oscar Wilde: A Critical Study (London: Martin Secker 1912).
  • W. W. Kenilworth, Oscar Wilde [a critical study] (1912).
  • R. Thurston Hopkins, Oscar Wilde: A Study of the Man and His Work (London: Lynwood 1913).
  • Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde and Myself (NY: Duffield & Co. 1914).
  • Frank Harris, Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions, 2 vols. ([NY 1916; 2nd edn. 1918; rep. 1920; Garden City 1930; Michigan State UP 1959), with ‘Memories of Oscar Wilde by George Bernard Shaw’ in edns. after 1918), & Do . (London: Constable 1938) [with deletions and corrections imposed by Alfred Douglas and written by G. B. Shaw].
  • R. H. Sherard, The Real Oscar (1917).
  • Stuart Mason, Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetic Movement (Dublin: Townley Searle 1920).
  • Ernst Bendz, Oscar Wilde: A Retrospect ([NY:] Alfred Hodler 1921).
  • Charles J. Finger, The Tragic Story of Oscar Wilde’s Life (Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius Co. 1923).
  • Bendz, trans. [Alfred Douglas], Freundschaft mid Oscar Wilde (Leipzig 1929).
  • Patrick Braybrooke, Oscar Wilde: A Study (London: Braithwaite & Miller 1920).
  • Arthur Symons, A Study of Oscar Wilde (London: Charles J. Sawyer 1930; rep. 1938), & Do . [another edn.] (Robinson Publ. Co., 1992), 384pp.
  • G. J. Renier, Oscar Wilde (London: Peter Davis 1933), 164pp., rep. as Do . (London: Thomas Nelson 1938), 164pp., bibl.
  • Sherard, Oscar Wilde Twice Defended from André Gide [ … ] and Frank Harris [&c .] (Chicago: Argus Book Shop 19324), 76pp.
  • Vincent O’Sullivan, Aspects of Wilde [2nd ed.] (London: Constable 1938).
  • Lord Alfred Douglas, A Summing-Up (London: Richards Press, first ed. 1940; reiss. 1950).
  • Hesketh Pearson, Oscar Wilde: His Life and Wit (London: Methuen; NY: Harper 1946), 389pp., front. port., 15 ills.
  • Edouard Roditi, Oscar Wilde [The Makers of Modern Literature] (Conn: New Directions 1947), 256pp., front. port.
  • George A. Woodcock, The Paradox of Oscar Wilde (London: T. V. Boardman 1949), 239pp., front. port. and 3 ills.
  • St. John Ervine, Oscar Wilde: A Present Time Appraisal (London: Allen & Unwin 1951), & Do . [another edn.] (NY: Macmillan 1952; NY: William Morrow 1952).
  • Vyvyan Holland, Son of Oscar Wilde (London: Hart-Davis 1954), 272pp.
  • James Laver, Oscar Wilde [Writers and their Work] (1954), port. & bibl.
  • James Laver, Oscar Wilde [Writers and their Work Series] (London: Longman 1954).
  • Giorgio Melchiori, The Tightrope Walkers: Studies of Mannerism in Modern English Literature (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1956).
  • Vyvyan Holland, Oscar Wilde, a Pictorial Biography (Viking 1960).
  • Rupert Hart-Davis, ed., Selected Letters of Oscar Wilde (OUP 1962), 432pp. [cf. Letters, 1962, supra].
  • H[arford] Montgomery Hyde, The Trials of Oscar Wilde (London: Methuen 1962).
  • H[arford] Montgomery Hyde, Oscar Wilde: The Aftermath (London: Methuen 1963), xxi,221pp., ill. [ports. facs. documents]; Do. (NY: Farrar, Straus & Co., 1963) [2], xxi, [3], 221pp. 22 cm. and Do. [rep. of New York edn.] (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press 1978) xxi, 221pp.
  • Micheál MacLiammóir, The Importance of Being Oscar (1963).
  • Walter W. Nelson, Oscar Wilde in Sweden and Other Essays (Dublin UP 1965).
  • E[dward] H[alim] Mikhail, ‘The Comedies of Oscar Wilde: A Critique Together with a Comprehensive Bibliography’ [Ph.D. Thesis] (Sheffield Univ. 1966).
  • Terence de Vere White, The Parents of Oscar Wilde (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1967).
  • Rupert Croft Crooke, Feasting with Panthers (Lodnon: W. H. Allen 1967).
  • Epifanio San Juan, Jr., The Art of Oscar Wilde (Princeton UP 1967).
  • Seán McCann, ed., The Wit of Oscar Wilde (London: Frewin 1969), 128pp., ill. [8 pls., 2 facs.], rep. (Dublin: O’Brien Press 1991), 128pp.
  • Richard Ellmann, ed., Oscar Wilde: A Collection of Critical Essays (NY: Prentice-Hall 1969; rep. 1986) [incl. Shaw [from Harris, op. cit.], Yeats, ‘My First Meeting with Oscar Wilde’ from Autobiographies; James Joyce, ‘Oscar Wilde: The Poet of Salomé’; Gide’s ‘In Memoriam’; George Woodcock, ‘The Social Rebel’; Edward Roditi, ‘Fiction as Allegory: The Picture of Dorian Gray’; Yeats [from Autobiographies ], J. L. Borges, W. H. Auden and Arthur Ransome (Oscar Wilde, 1912).
  • Philippe Jullian, Oscar Wilde (Einaudi 1972), Do ., trans. Violet Wyndam (London: Paladin 1969; rep. London: Constable 1994), 420pp.
  • Brian Reade, Sexual Heretics: Male Homosexuality in English Literature from 1850 to 1900 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1970).
  • Karl Beckson, ed., Oscar Wilde, The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; NY: Barnes & Noble 1970) [incld. Edgar Saltus, ‘Wilde’s Literary Ability’; Holbrook Jackson, ‘Wilde as Dandy and Artist’; John Cowper Powys ‘on Wilde as a Symbolic Figure’; et al.].
  • Rupert Croft-Brooke, The Unrecorded Life of Oscar Wilde (NY: McKay 1972).
  • Terence de Vere White, ‘Oscar Wilde’, The Anglo-Irish [Chap. XVI] (London: Gollancz 1972).
  • Crooke, The Unrecorded Life of Oscar Wilde (London: W. H. Allen 1972).
  • Robin Spencer, The Aesthetic Movement: Theory and Practice (London: Studio Vista 1972).
  • Kevin Sullivan, Oscar Wilde [Columbia Essays on Modern Writers] (NY: Columbia UP 1972).
  • Martin Fido, Oscar Wilde (London: Hamlyn 1973).
  • Richard Ellmann, Eminent Domain: Yeats Among Wilde, Joyce, Pound, Eliot and Auden (Oxford: OUP 1967; 1970, &c.), vii, 159pp.
  • Richard Ellmann, Golden Codgers: Biographical Speculations (London OUP 1973) [essays on Shaw, Wilde, Yeats & Joyce].
  • Christopher S. Nassaar, Into the Demon Universe: A Literary Exploration of Oscar Wilde (New Haven: Yale UP 1974).
  • H. Montgomery Hyde, Oscar Wilde, A Biography (NY: Farrar Straus 1975; London: Methuen 1976) [410pp.].
  • Sheridan Morley, Oscar Wilde: An Illustrated Biography (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1976), Do ., rep. edn. (London: Pavilion 1997), 160pp.
  • Alan Bird, The Plays of Oscar Wilde [Vision Critical Studies] (London: [Duckworth]; NY: Barnes & Noble 1977), 220pp.
  • Richard Ellmann & John Espey, Oscar Wilde: Two Approaches: Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, 17 April 1976 (William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Seminar Papers] (LA: Clark Memorial Lib., California UP 1977), vii, 50pp., ill.
  • Donald H. Ericksen, Oscar Wilde (NY: Twayne 1977), 175pp.
  • Rodney Shewan, Oscar Wilde: Art and Egotism (London: Macmillan 1977), xix, 239pp., ill. [viii pls.]
  • Bruce Bashford, ‘Oscar Wilde, his Criticism and His Critics’, in English Literature in Transition, 20 (1977), pp.181-87.
  • Bruce, Bashford, ‘Oscar Wilde and Subjectivist Criticism’, in English Literature in Transition, 21 (1978), pp.218-34.
  • Philip K. Cohen, The Moral Vision of Oscar Wilde (London: AUP 1978).
  • Vyvyan Wilde, Oscar Wilde and His World (Book Club 1978), ill.
  • E. H. Mikhail, Interviews and Recollections, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan 1978).
  • John Stokes, Oscar Wilde [British Council Writers and their Works Series] (London: Longman 1978).
  • E. H. Mikhail, ed. Interviews and Recollections, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan 1979).
  • Colbert Kearney, The Importance of Being Earnest [Gill & Macmillan Study Notes] (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1979) [q.pp.].
  • Theodore Wratislaw, Oscar Wilde, A Memoir, foreword by John Betjeman [Eighteen Nineties Soc. 1979) [ltd. edn. 500 copies].
  • Mark Nicholls [Leslie Frewin], The Importance of Being Oscar: The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde Set against His Life and Times (NY: St. Martin’s Press 1980; Robson 1981), 238pp., & Do . [rep.], issued under author-name of Frewin, The Importance of Being Oscar: The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde [ … &c. ] (London: W. H. Allen 1986).
  • Robert Keith Miller, Oscar Wilde (New York: Ungar 1982).
  • William Tydeman, Oscar Wilde: Comedies [Modern Judgements ser.] (London: Macmillan 1982).
  • Katherine Worth, Oscar Wilde (London: Macmillan 1983).
  • Jean M. Ellis D’Alessandro, Hues of Mutability: The Waning Vision in Oscar Wilde’s Narrative (Florence Univ. 1983).
  • Peter Ackroyd, The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (London: Hamish Hamilton 1983).
  • Richard Pine, Oscar Wilde [Gill’s Irish Lives] (London: Gill & Macmillan 1983), and Do. [reiss.] (Gill & Macmillan 1997), x, 156pp.
  • Harold Bloom, Oscar Wilde (NY: Chelsea 1985).
  • Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde at Oxford [Lecture at Library of Congress, 1 March 1983] (Washington: Library of Congress 1984), 30pp.
  • Martin Fido, Oscar Wilde: An Illustrated Biography (NY: Peter Bedrick 1985).
  • Richard Ellmann, Wilde, Yeats, Joyce and Beckett: Four Dubliners (Washington DC: Library of Congress 1986).
  • Martin Stoddard, Art, Messianism, and Crime: Sade, Wilde, Hitler, Manson and Others (NY: St. Martin’s Press 1986).
  • Regenia Gagnier, Idylls of the Market Place, Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public (Scolar Press 1987), 255pp.
  • W. Von Eckardt and J. E. Chamberlain, ed., Oscar Wilde’s London (London: O’Mara Books 1988).
  • Peter Raby, Oscar Wilde [British & Irish Authors / Introductory Critical Studies] (Cambridge UP 1988), ix, 164pp.
  • Regina Gagnier, Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public (Stanford UP 1986).
  • Owen Dudley Edwards, The Fireworks of Oscar Wilde (London: Barrie & Jenkins 1989).
  • Philip E. Smith II & Michael S. Helfand, ed. & comm., Oscar Wilde’s Oxford Notebooks: A Portrait of Mind in the Making.
    • [Oxford Notebooks] (OUP 1989), xviii, 256pp., ill. [1 pl/. port.], 25 cm.
  • Kerry Powell, Oscar Wilde and the Theatre of the 1890s (Cambridge UP 1990).
  • Nobert Kohl, Oscar Wilde: The Works of A Conformist Rebel, trans. David Henry Wilson [European Studies in English Literature] (Cambridge UP 1989), x, 439pp.
  • Neil Sammells, ‘Oscar Wilde, Quite Another Thing’, in Paul Hyland and Sammells, eds., Irish Writing: Exile and Subversion (Macmillan 1991), pp.116-25.
  • Regenia Gagnier, ed. Critical Essays on Oscar Wilde (NY: Twayne, 1991).
  • Jonathan Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud and Foucault (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1991).
  • Norman Page, An Oscar Wilde Chronology (London: Macmillan 1991).
  • David A. Upchurch, Wilde’s Use of Celtic Elements in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (NY: Peter Lang 1992), 104pp.
  • Richard Pine, The Thief of Reason: Oscar Wilde and Modern Ireland (NY: St. Martin's Press 1995), xii, 478pp.
  • Melissa Knox, Oscar Wilde, A Long and Lovely Suicide (Yale UP 1994; pb. 1996) [psychoanalytical biography; panned by Merlin Holland in TLS, 13 Jan. 1995].
  • Ian Small, Oscar Wilde Revalued: An Essay on New Materials and Methods of Research (Greensboro N. Carolina, ELT Press; [distrib. by] Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1993), 275pp.
  • C. George Sandulescu, ed., Rediscovering Oscar Wilde [[proceedings of the 5th International Conference, held at the Princess Grace Irish Library, Monaco - 28-31 May 1993] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1994), xvi, 464pp. [see contents].
  • Alan Sinfield [Univ. of Sussex], The Wilde Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde and the Queer Moment (London: Cassell 1994).
  • Gary Schmidgall, The Stranger Wilde, Interpreting Oscar (Abacus 1994).
  • Declan Kiberd, ‘Wilde the English Question’, in the Times Literary Supplement (16.12.1994), pp.13-15.
  • Joseph Spence, ‘“The Great Angelic Sin”: The Faust legend in Irish Literature, 1820-1900’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 1, 2 (Autumn 1994), pp.47-58, espec. pp.54.
  • Davis Coakley, Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Irish (Dublin: Town House 1994; reiss. 1995), 249pp.
  • Juliet Gardiner, Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters and Wit (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan; London: Collins & Brown 1995), 160pp., ill [facsims., ports. [some colour; available as cased; 20x26cm.]; Do. (Trafalgar Square Publ. 1997); and Do. [French trans. as] Oscar Wilde: choisies et commente´es par Juliet Gardiner [Lettres illustre´es] ([Paris]: Herscher [1996]. 159pp., ill. [some col.]
  • “Oscar Wilde Special”, Irish Studies Review, 11 (Summer 1995) [contents].
  • Seamus Heaney, ‘Speranza in Reading: On “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”’, in The Redress of Poetry [Oxford Poetry Lectures] (London: Faber & Faber 1995), pp.83-102.
  • Declan Kiberd, ‘Oscar Wilde: The Artist as Irishman’, in Inventing Ireland (London: Cape 1995), pp.33-50.
  • ‘Oscar Wilde Special’, Irish Studies Review, 11 (Summer 1995) [see infra], Rodney Shewan, Oscar Wilde: Art and Egoism (London: Macmillan 1997).
  • Pine, The Thief of Reason: Oscar Wilde and Modern Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1995), 478pp.
  • John Stokes, Oscar Wilde: Myths, Miracles, and Imitations (Cambridge UP 1996), 216pp.
  • Michael Patrick Gillespie, Oscar Wilde and the Poetics of Ambiguity (Florida UP 1996), 208pp.
  • Sos Eltis, Revising Wilde: Society and Subversion in the Plays of Oscar Wilde [English Monographs] (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1996), 236pp.
  • Lawrence Danson, Wilde’s Intentions: The Art in his Criticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1997), [198]220pp., pb. edn. (1998).
  • William Tyneman and Steven Price, Wilde: Salome (Cambridge UP 1997), 228pp. [complete study].
  • Michael J. Foldy, The Trials of Oscar Wilde: Deviance, Morality and Late-Victorian Society (Yale UP 1997), 224pp.
  • Peter Raby, ed., Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde (Cambridge UP 1997), xxii, 307pp. [contents].
  • Jonathan Fryer, André and Oscar and the Gay Art of Living (London: Constable 1997), 320pp. [on Gide and Wilde].
  • Philip Hoare, Wilde’s Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy and the First World War (London: Duckworth 1997), 250pp.
  • Julie Prewitt Brown, Cosmopolitan Criticism: Oscar Wilde’s Philosophy of Art (Virginia UP; London: Pluto Press 1997).
  • Stephen Calloway & David Colvin, Oscar Wilde: An Exquisite Life (London: Orion Media 1997, 1999), 112pp.
  • David Alderson, ‘Momentary Pleasures: Wilde and English Virtue’, in Sex, Nation and Dissent in Irish Writing, ed. Éibhear Walshe (Cork UP 1997), pp.43-59.
  • Arveril Gardaer, ‘Oscar Wilde ‘ in Irish Playwrights, 1880-1995: A Research and Production Sourcebook, ed. Bernice Schrank & William Demastes (CT: Greenwood Press 1997), pp.375-84.
  • Jerusha McCormack, ed., Wilde the Irishman (Yale UP 1998), 205pp. [contribs. incl. Declan Kiberd, Derek Mahon, Frank McGuinness, Alan Stanford, and Fintan O’Toole; incl. Heaney’s address at ded. of Westminster Abbey Wilde window].
  • Stephen Regan, ‘The Celtic Spirit in Literature: Renan, Arnold, Wilde and Yeats’, in Irish Encounters: Poetry, Politics and Prose, ed. Alan Marshall & Neil Sammells (Bath: Sulis Press 1998) [Chap. 4; qpp.].
  • Anne Varty, A Preface to Oscar Wilde (London: Addison-Wesley Longman 1998), 320pp.
  • Mary W. Blanchard, Oscar Wilde’s America: Counterculture in the Gilded Age (Yale UP 1998), 320pp. 221 ills.
  • Robert Tanitch, Oscar Wilde on Stage and Screen (London: Methuen 1998), 192pp.
  • Sandra F. Siegel, ‘Oscar Wilde’s Gift and Oxford’s “Coarse Impertinence”’, in Ideology and Ireland in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Tadhg Foley & Seán Ryder (Dublin: Four Courts Press 1998), pp.69-78.
  • Vicki Mahaffey, States of Desire: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, and the Irish Experiment (NY: OUP 1998), xix, 276pp., ill.
  • Máire Ní Fhlathúin, ‘The Irish Oscar Wilde: Appropriations of the Artist’, in Irish Studies Review, 7, 3 (Dec. 1999), pp.337-46.
  • Bruce Bashford, Oscar Wilde: The Critic as Humanist (NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP; London: AUP 1999) 197pp.
  • Jerusha Hull McCormack, The Man Who was Dorian Gray (NY: St Martin’s Press; Basingstoke: Palgrave 2000), 353pp.
  • Douglas Murray, Bosie (London: Hodder & Stoughton; NY: Hyperion 2000), x, 374pp., ill. [24 pls.]; Do. [rep. edn.] (London: Sceptre [2002]), x, 374pp.
  • Neil Sammells, Wilde Style: The Plays and Prose of Oscar Wilde [Studies in 18th & 19th-c. Lit.] (Harlow: Longman 2000), vi, 143pp.
  • Colm Tóibín, ‘Love in a Dark Time’, review of The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, in London Review of Books. ed, Holland & Hart-Davis (19 April 2001), pp.11-17.
  • Barbara Belford, Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius (London: Bloomsbury [2001]), 388pp.
  • Joseph Bristow, ed., Wilde Writings: Contextual Conditions (Toronto UP 2002), 312pp.
  • Horst Schroeder, Additions and Corrections to Richard Ellmann’s “Oscar Wilde” [2nd Edn.] (Braunschweig: priv. 2002), xxii, 311pp.
  • Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, ed., The Wilde Legacy (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2003), 172pp.
    • [see details].
  • John Sloan, Oscar Wilde (Oxford: OUP 2003), 240pp.
  • Merlin Holland, Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess: The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde (London: Fourth Estate 2003, 2004), xliii, 340pp.
  • John Sloan, Oscar Wilde (Oxford & NY: OUP 2003), xii, 225pp.
  • Neil McKenna, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (London: Century 2003), 288pp.
  • Hans-Christian Oeser, Oscar Wilde ABC (Leipzig: Reclam Verlag 2004), 176pp.
  • Morris B. Kaplan, Sodom on the Thames: Sex, Love and Scandal in Wilde Times (Cornell UP 2005), 314pp.
  • Patrick R. O’Malley, ‘“Monstrous and Terrible Delight”: The Aesthetic Gothic of Pater and Wilde’, in Catholicism, Sexual Deviance, and Victorian Gothic Culture (Cambridge UP 2006), Chap. 5. [q.pp.].
  • Jarlath Killeen, The Faiths of Oscar Wilde: Catholicism, Folklore and Ireland (London: Palgrave 2005), 240pp. [see contents].
  • Florina Tufescu, Oscar Wilde’s Plagiarism: The Triumph of Art Over Ego (Dublin: IAP 2007), 244pp. [history of plagiarism].
  • Jarleth Killeen, The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde (Ashgate Publishing 2007), 194pp. [study of The Happy Prince and Other Stories (1888) and The House of Pomegranates (1891)].
  • Thomas Wright, A Wilde Read: Oscar’s Books (London: Chatto & Windus 2008), rep. as Oscar’s Books: A Journey around the Library of Oscar Wilde (London: Vintage Books 2009), 370pp. [Index 359ff. extract].
  • John Wilson Foster, ‘Against Nature? Science and Oscar Wilde’, in Between Shadows: Modern Irish Writing and Culture (Dublin: IAP 2009), pp.30-47.
  • Jarlath Killeen., ed., Oscar Wilde [Visions and revisions: Irish writers in their Time] (Dublin: IAP 2010), xii, 210pp.
  • Ruth Robbins, Oscar Wilde (London: Continuum 2010), 176pp.
  • Stefano Evangelista, ed., The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe (London: Continuum 2010), 480pp.
  • Florins Tufescu, Oscar Wilde’s Plagiarism: The Triumph of Art over Ego (Dublin: IAP 2011), 200pp.
  • Eibhear Walshe, Oscar’s Shadow: Wilde, Homosexuality and Modern Ireland (Cork UP 2011), 232pp.
  • [...]
  • David Charles Rose,  Oscar Wilde’s Elegant Republic: Transformation, Dislocation and Fantasy in fin-de-siècle Paris (Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2015), 610pp.
    • [see online; accessed 09.08.2107].
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General Commentary
  • Graham Hough, The Last Romantics (London: Duckworth 1949).
  • Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (NY: New Directions 1966).
  • Bernard Bergonzi, The Turn of the Century (London: Macmillan 1973).
  • Jane Marcus, ‘Salomé, The Jewish Princess was a New Woman’, in Bulletin of New York Public Library, Vol. 78 (1974), pp.95-113.
  • Karl Beckson, ed., Aesthetics and Decadents of the 1890s (NY: Random House 1966; enl. edn., Chicago: Academy Chicago Publ. 1981).
  • John Dixon Hunt, The Pre-Raphaelite Imagination 1848-1900 (Lincoln, NE: Nebraska UP 1968).
  • David DeLaura, Hebrew and Hellene in Victorian England (Texas UP 1969).
  • Elizabeth Aslin, The Aesthetic Movement (London: Elek 1969); 248pp.
  • Ian Fletcher, Romantic Mythologies (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1967).
  • Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (London: OUP 1972).
  • John Fletcher & John Stokes, The Decadent Consciousness (NY: Garland 1979).
  • Malcolm Bradbury & John Fletcher, eds., Decadence and the 1890s (London: Edward Arnold 1979).
  • Edward Said, The World, the Text, the Critic (Cambridge MA: Harvard UP 1983).
  • R. K. R. Thorton, The Decadent Dilemma (London: Edward Arnold 1983).
  • Terry Eagleton, St. Oscar [a play] (Derry: Field Day 1989), with author’s pref., [‘the Irish Roland Barthes’].
  • Michael Steinman, Yeats’s Heroic Figures: Wilde, Parnell, Swift, Casement (1983);.
  • Declan Kiberd, ‘Anglo-Irish Attitudes’, in Ireland’s Field Day, intro. Roger McHugh (London: Hutchinson 1985), pp.83-105.
  • [Q.auth.,] ‘The Uses of Decadence: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce,’ in Studies in Anglo-French Cultural Relations: Imagining France, ed. Ceri Crossley & Ian Small [lecture at Bennington College in Ben Bullit Lectureship ser.] (London: Macmillan 1988), q.pp.
  • Kiberd, ‘Irish Literature and History’, in Roy Foster, Oxford Illustrated Book of Irish History (OUP 1989) [lit. appendix].
  • Rohase Piercy, The Coward Does it with a Kiss (London: Gay Men’s Press 1990), 127pp. [recreating Wilde’s marriage from Constance’s viewpoint].
  • Karl Beckson, London in the 1890s: A Cultural History (NY: Norton 1992).
  • Oscar Wilde: Trial and Punishment 1895-1897 (London: HM Public Records Office 1997) [package publication]
    Ellis Hanson, Decadence and Catholicism (Harvard UP 1998), 403pp. [Baudelaire, J.-K. Huysmans; Pater; Wilde, et al.].
  • Munira H. Mutran, ed., ‘Wilde’s Thread in the Fabric of Decadent Art’, in ABEI Journal - The Brazilian Journal of Irish Studies, No. 1 (June 1999), pp.65-67 [see extract].
  • Jorge Luis Borges [et al.], Oscar Wilde a cien años [Proa, 50; “Tercera época / Edición especial”] (Buenos Aires: PROA [Feb.] 2001), 156pp., ill. 2001.
  • Linda Dryden, The Modern Gothic and Literary Doubles: Stevenson, Wilde, and Wells (Palgrave Macmillan 2003), xiii, 220pp. [incls. chap.: ‘Oscar Wilde: Gothic Ironies and Terrible Dualities’.]
  • Frederick S. Roden, ed., Palgrave Advances in Oscar Wilde Studies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
    • 2004),. xxxix, 275pp.
  • Angela Kingston, Oscar Wilde as a Character in Victorian Fiction (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2007), 320pp. [Chaps. on Aesthete 1877-1890; Decadent 1891-1895; Paria 1896-1900; covers 32 contemps. incl. Conrad, Conan Doyle, Henry James, Shaw and Bram Stoker]..
 
Biographies of Constance Wilde
  • Joyce Bentley, The Importance of Being Constance (London: Robert Hale 1983) [on Constance Wilde, née Constance Mary Lloyd].
  • Anne Clerk Amor, Mrs Oscar Wilde: A Woman of Some Importance (London: Sidgewick & Jackson 1983), 249pp., front. port., 18 ills.
  • Franny Moyle, Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs. Oscar Wilde (London: John Murray 2011), 374pp.

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Bibliographies
  • Stuart Mason [pseud. of Christopher Millard], A Bibliography of Oscar Wilde (London: T. Werner Laurie 1914).
  • John Charles Finzi, Oscar Wilde and His Literary Circle: A Catalog of Manuscripts and Letters in the William Andrew Clark Memorial Library (California UP 1957).
  • Mason, ed., Bibliography of Oscar Wilde [new edn.] (London: Bertram Rota 1967).
  • E. H. Mikhail, Oscar Wilde: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism (London: Macmillan 1978).
  • Thomas A. Mikolyzk, Oscar Wilde: An Annotated Bibliography [Bibliographies and Indexes in World Literature, No. 38] (Conn: Greenwood Press 1993), 496pp.
  • Mason, Bibliography of Oscar Wilde, new ed., intro. Timothy d’Arch Smith (London: Bertram ROTA 1967); 605pp. [Periodical Publications incl. Irish Monthly [80-89]; Kottabos [91-99]; also, Works issued in Book Form, orig. eds. and authorised reprints; Collected Edns. authorised for America; authorised for Continent; pirated.].
  • E. H. Mikhail, Annotated Bibliography of Wilde Criticism (Macmillan 1978), 249pp.
  • Ian Small, Oscar Wilde Revalued: An Essay on New Materials and Methods of Research (Greensboro N. Carolina, ELT Press; Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1993), 275pp. [see contents].
  • John Wilson Foster, ‘Against Nature? Science and Oscar Wilde’, in Between Shadows: Modern Irish Writing and Culture (Dublin: IAP 2009), pp.30-47 [see extracts].
  • Ciaran Murray, Disorientalism: Asian Subversion / Irish Visions [Transactions of the Asiatic Soc. of Japan, 5th Ser.], Vol. 1 (2009) - Supplement: Chap. 3: ‘Oscar Wilde Cancels a Country’, pp.19-67, of which Notes, pp.55-67.
  • Elaine Showalter, Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin-de-Siècle (Reading: Virago Press 2009) [parallels between 19th and 20th century ends; incls. discussion of Wilde].
  • Eibhear Walshe, Oscar’s Shadow: Wilde, Homosexuality and Modern Ireland (Cork University Press, 2012), 170pp.
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NY Review of Books [q.auth.]
  • ‘Oscar at Oxford’, in New York Review of Books, 31 (29 March 1984), pp.23-28.
  • ‘Wilde in New York: Beauty Packed Them In’, in New York Times Review of Books (11 November 1987), pp.15-16.
  • ‘Oscar Meets Walt,’ in New York Review of Books (13 December 1987), pp.42-44.
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class="Heading3">Plays, Novels & Films on Wilde
Plays, Leslie & Sewell Stokes, Oscar Wilde: A Play (London: Secker & Warburg 1937); Terry Eagleton, St. Oscar (Derry: Field Day 1989); Thomas Kilroy, The Secret Fall of Constance (Dublin; Gallery Press 1997); David Hare, The Judas Kiss (Almeida Th., London 1997), with Liam Neeson as Wilde; Moisés Kauffman, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1998); Julian Mitchell, Wilde (London: Orion Media 1997), 299pp. [script of film]; also Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Life (?1997).

Fiction, Sewell Stokes, Beyond His Means: A Novel Based on the Life of Oscar Wilde (London: Peter Davis 1955).

Films, Wilde (1997), dir. Brian Gilbert and screenplay by Julian Mitchell (1997), with Stephen Fry as Wilde and Vanessa Redgrave as Speranza; The Trials of Oscar Wilde (c.1967), with Albert Finney as Wilde; RTÉ 4-part drama series dir by James Douglas (May 1995); also Ken Russell, Salome’s Last Dance (1988), and a musical based on Dorian Gray (London 1997). [Search for earlier films].

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Q.a.?
  • ‘Oscar at Oxford,’ in New York Review of Books, 31 (29 March 1984), pp.23-28.
  • ‘Wilde in New York: Beauty Packed Them In’, in New York Times Review of Books (11 November 1987), pp.15-16.
  • ‘Oscar Meets Walt,’ in New York Review of Books (13 December 1987), pp.42-44.

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Individual Critics
H. Montgomery Hyde (Works on Wilde): ed., The Trials of Oscar Wilde (London: Hodge 1948); Cases that Changed the Law (London: Heinemann 1951); That Other Love (London: Heinemann 1970); Oscar Wilde: The Aftermath (London: Methuen 1963); A History of Pornography (London: Heinemann 1964); ‘Oscar Wilde’, in Four Oaks Library, ed. Gabriel Austin (Somerville, NJ: [priv.] 1967); ed., The Annotated Oscar Wilde (London: Orbis 1982); ‘The Riddle of De Profundis : Who Owns the Manuscript?’, in Antigonish Review, 54 (1983), pp.107-27; ‘Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas’, in Essays by Divers Hands, 43 [n.s.] (1984), 139-40; also Mary Hyde, Bernard Shaw and Alfred Douglas: A Correspondence (London: John Murray 1982).

Richard Ellmann, Eminent Domain: Yeats Among Wilde, Joyce, Pound, Eliot and Auden (Oxford: OUP 1967; 1974, &c.), vii, 159pp.; Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde (London: Hamish Hamilton 1987; Penguin Edn. 1988) [the standard biography]. Also ‘The Critic as Artist as Wilde’, in Encounter, 29, 1 (1967), pp.28-47; rep. in Critical Writings (1970); ‘Overtures to Salomé,’ in Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, 17 (1968), pp.17-28, rep. in Ellmann, ed., Critical Essays (1969), and in Ellmann, Golden Codgers (1973); with John J. Espey, Oscar Wilde: Two Approaches (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library 1977); ‘Henry James among the Aesthetes’, in Proceedings of the British Academy, 69 (1983), pp.209-28; rep. in along the riverrun: Selected Essays (London: Hamish Hamilton 1988).

Bibliographical details
Stuart Mason [Christopher Millard], ed., Oscar Wilde: Art and Morality - A Defence of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (London: J. Jacobs 1908), 160pp., ill. [1 l. of pls.; port. ; 20 cm.; ltd. edn. of 475 - Includes reviews of Dorian Gray together with 8 of Wilde’s published letters in reply to hostile criticisms; also Bibliography of The Picture of Dorian Gray, pp.[150]-60.

C. George Sandulescu, ed., Rediscovering Oscar Wilde [Princess Grace Irish Library, Monaco; Conference of 28-31 May 1993] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1994), xvi, 464pp. CONTENTS: Denis Donoghue, ‘The Oxford of Pater, Hopkins, and Wilde’; Jerusha McCormack on Wilde’s Dandyism; Ronald Schuchard on Wilde’s Catholicism; Deirdre Toomey on oral qualities; Davis Coakley on the Dublin background; Maria Pilar Pulido on “Speranza”; Neil Sammells on Wilde’s encounter with England and Englishness [‘Rediscovering the Irish Wilde’, pp.362-70]; Lawrence Danson on Wilde’s credo; also papers by Theoharis Constantine, Isobel Murray, Pria Brînzeu, Marie-Noëlle Zeender, Jean M. Ellis D’Alessandro, Sylvia Ostermann, and Michael Patrick Gillespie.

Irish Studies Review [‘Oscar Wilde Special’], 11 (Summer 1995), incls. Richard Haslam, ‘Oscar Wilde and the Imagination of the Celt’, p.2; Owen Dudley Edwards, ‘Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Hibernicism’, p.7; Philip McEvansoneya, ‘Oscar Wilde and Decadence in Art’, p.14; J/. B. Lyons, ‘Oscar Wilde’s Final Illness’, p.24; Michael Judd, ‘Stained Glass Images of Oscar Wilde’, p.28; Robert Blackburn, ‘“The Utterable and the Dream”’, Aspects of Wilde’s Reception in Central Europe 1900-1922’, p.30; Neil Sammells, ‘Pulp Fictions, Oscar Wilde and Quentin Tarantino’, p.39; with Alan Sinfield, ‘Wilde and the Queer Moment’, p.47, an article; and a review article of Sinfield, The Wilde Century, Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde and the Queer Moment (Cassell 1994), reviewed by Scott Wilson, p.49 [and indignantly answered by Sinfield, Irish Studies Review, No. 12, Autumn 1995, pp.37-38]; also Declan Kiberd reviews C. George Sandelescu, ed., Rediscovering Oscar Wilde (Colin Smythe 1994), p.53; reviews of Gary Schmidgall, The Stranger Wilde, Interpreting Oscar (Abacus 1994), and Juliet Gardiner, Oscar Wilde, A Life in Letters and Wit (Gill & Macmillan 1995), ed., David Rose, director of Wilde Summer School in Bray, Co. Wicklow[ top ]

Peter Raby, ed., Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde (Cambridge UP 1997), xxii, 307pp. CONTENTS: Pt. 1 - Context: 1. Merlin Holland, ‘Biography and the Art of Lying’; 2. Regenia Gagnier, ‘Wilde and the Victorians’; 3. Stephen Calloway, ‘Wilde and the Dandyism of the Senses’. Pt. 2 - Wilde’s works: 4. Karl Beckson & Bobby Fong, ‘Wilde as Poet’; 5. John Stokes, ‘Wilde the Journalist’; 6. Lawrence Danson, ‘Wilde as Critic and Theorist’; 7. Jerusha McCormack ‘Wilde’s Fiction(s)’; 8. Joseph Donohue, ‘Distance, Death and Desire in Salomé’; 9. Peter Raby, ‘Wilde’s Comedies of Society’; 10. Russell Jackson, ‘ The Importance of Being Earnest’. Pt. 3. Themes and influences: 11. ‘Kerry Powell, ‘A Verdict of Death: Oscar Wilde, Actresses and Victorian Women’; 12. Joseph Bristow ‘"A complex multiform creature": Wilde’s Sexual Identities’; 13. Richard Allen Cave, ‘Wilde’s Plays: Some Lines of Influence’; 14. Joel Kaplan, ‘Wilde on the Stage’; 15. Declan Kiberd, ‘Oscar Wilde : the Resurgence of Lying’.

Ian Small, Oscar Wilde Revalued: An Essay on New Materials and Methods of Research (Greensboro N. Carolina, ELT Press; Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1993), 275pp. CONTENTS: The Myth of Wilde; Biography Reconsidered; Prologue to the Letters [uncollected letters; undated letters; typed copies … &c.]; Manuscripts; Literary Histories; Major Critical Studies; General Critical Studies; Editions; Bibliographies; General Bibliography.

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Eiléan Ní Cuilleanáin, ed. The Wilde Legacy [Proceedings of a Centenary Conference held at Trinity College Dublin] (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2003), 172pp.
Summary: ‘[...] The Wilde family was prominent, sometimes sensationally so, in the literary, scholarly, political and professional milieus of Victorian Dublin and then London. D. Coakley sketches in the social and professional background of the family; Peter Froggat and Michael Ryan assess the enduring value of Sir William Wilde’s work as medical historian and statistician, and as archaeologist and antiquarian; Eilean Ni Chuilleanain looks at the role of Oscar’s mother, Speranza, as an ancestor-figure for a contemporary woman writer. Lucy McDiarmid and Alan Sinfield write on Wilde’s trials and on the scandalous reverberations of his name in the 20th century. Robert Dunbar places Oscar Wilde’s stories for children in their Victorian context, while Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy considers their trans-formation into the successful theatre adaptation, The Star-Child. Wilde’s plays are the subject of a lively discussion between distinguished Irish play-wrights and producers, Marina Carr, Thomas Kilroy, Michael Colgan and Patrick Mason.’

Jarlath Killeen, The Faiths of Oscar Wilde: Catholicism, Folklore and Ireland [Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-century Writing and Culture] (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2005), xi, 228pp. CONTENTS [chaps.]: 1. Child and man: the development of a Catholic mind; 2. Faith and reason: the Bible, the Catholic church and Wilde’s scandalous writings; 3. Body and soul: nature, the host and folklore in The picture of Dorian Gray; 4. Religion and politics: Wilde’s social philosophy; 5. Art and life: the politics of ritualism in The importance of being Earnest; 6. Realism and romance: between Protestantism and Catholicism in Wilde’s final writings. Bibl. references (pp.210-21) and Index.  

Studies of Oscar Wilde by Jarlath Killeen

Routledge (2007)

Palgrave (2005)
J_Killeen-01
Four Courts Press (2010)
 

Wilde Websites
Douglas O. Linder, “The Trials of Oscar Wilde: An Account” (1999), gives a detailed description of the forensic evidence including personalities involved, details of blackmail, letters to Bosie, and a photocopy of the ‘card’ that Queensberry left at Wilde’s hotel [online]. The paper is part of a project on Famous Trials in the Missouri-Kansas University School of Law.

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