Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
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Life |
1854: [Oscar Fingal OFlahertie
Wills Wilde; var. Offlahertie; College and early literature
signature, Oscar F. OF. Wilde]; b. 16 Oct. 1854,
at 21 [recte; with vars. 15, 23] Westland Row, Dublin, son of Dr.
(later Sir) William Robert Wilde [ q.v.]
and his wife Jane Francesca Elgee [ q.v.];
OW was bapt. St Marks Church of Ireland Parish, Brunswick
St. by his uncle Rev. Ralph Wilde [26 April 1855 per Church of Ireland
registry - as infra]; by repute
he was subseq. bapt. by Catholic priest at Glencree at his mothers
request, his maternal grandmother being an OFlynn; dressed
as girl in early childhood, poss. to ward off fairies [see note];
family moved to 1 Merrion Square [East], 1855; ed. Royal School,
Portora, Enniskillen Co. Fermanagh, 1864-71, with his elder brother
William [b. 26 Sept. 1852]; occas. plays with children of Joseph
Sheridan Le Fanu; suffers at death in Longford of his little sister,
Isola [aetat. 10; b. 2 April 1857, d. in 1867 at 1 Merrion Sq.,
N.; acc. to Oscar, dancing as a golden sunbeam about the house
- a lock of whose hair he always carried and for whom he wrote Requiescat;
spends holidays at Moytura, the family house in Mayo [also the locale
of the mythological battles in the Book of Invasions/Gabhala]; wins
Portora School Scholarship to Trinity College, Dublin [TCD], reading
Classics, 1871-74; roomed with Willie at Botany Bay, 1872-73; elected
Foundation Scholar, 1873 [by examination]; challenges college bully
to fisticuffs and wins; |
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tutored in classics by Robert Tyrrell
(chair of Latin) and J. P. Mahaffy (chair of ancient history; q.v.);
disdained Third Year exams but took Berkeley Gold medal for Greek
at TCD; visited Geneva and Paris with Lady Wilde; assists Mahaffy
with proofs of Social Life in Greece from Homer to Menander
(1874), duly acknowledged in the preface; matriculates at Magdalen
College, Oxford, 17 Oct. 1874, entering that college with a Demyship
on his birthday, 1874 (My accent was one of the things I lost
at Oxford); grad. in Classic (Greats), 1878; made
friends with David Hunter Blair, later a convert to Catholicism,
Reginald Harding, William Ward, and others; became acquainted with
Walter Pater and John Ruskin; visits Florence, Venice, Padua, Verona,
and Milan with Mahaffy, Summer 1875; falls in love Florence Balcombe
(just seventeen and the most perfectly beautiful face I ever
saw and not a sixpence of money letter to Ward), who
subsequently becomes engaged to Bram Stoker in 1878; |
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1875: publishes Chorus of Cloud-Maidens in
Dublin University Magazine, 1875; meets Frank Miles in
London, and Lillie Langry in the formers studio; travels
with Miles to his home in Nottingham and afterwards to the Wildes
fishing lodge in Connemara (where Miles made murals of the Wilde
boys as fishing cherubs), August 1875; death of Sir William Wilde,
19 April, 1876; assists Mahaffy with Rambles and Studies in
Greece; travels with Mahaffy to Genoa and Ravenna and onwards
to Corfu, Olympia, Argos, Aegina, Athens, and Mycenae, setting
aside a meeting planned with Blair and Ward in Rome, Spring 1876;
detours to Rome on return journey and gains audience with Pope
Pius IX, arranged by David Hunter Blair (I would go over
as a luxury); sent down for the remainder of the term at
Magdalen for returning late; stays in London and reviews the Grosvenor
Gallery opening exhibition, 1876;
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returns to Dublin; sudden death
of his half-br. Henry Wilson, from whom he receives a small legacy
conditional on his remaining Anglican for five years; Class Moderations
(Oxon.), 1876; wins Newdigate Prize for Ravenna (poem),
10 July, 1878; takes Double First (Litterae Humaniores), 19 July
1878; appears to have received mercury treatment (used for syphilis),
March 1878 [acc. Ellmann]; narrowly misses fellowship, 1879; engages
in flirtation with Violet Hunt in Dublin, 1879; sets up in London
as Professor of Aesthetics, 1879; moves to London and
takes rooms at Salisbury St. (off the Strand), with Miles, displaying
a port. of Lillie Langtry by Edward Poynter on an easel therein;
his mother and elder brother move to London also, May 1879; strews
Madonna lilies before Sarah Bernhardt on her arrival at Dover with
Comédie Française; writes Vera, or The Nihilists,
autumn 1880; probably proposed to Violet Hunt and Charlotte Montefiore,
to be refused by both, 1880; |
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1881: Vera scheduled
for Adelphi production in December but withdrawn on account of assassination
of Tsar Alexander II, March 1881 (Princess Alexandra being sister
of the Tsarina), and that of President Garland in America; proposes
to Charlotte Montefiori, 1881; began to be caricatured in Punch
as Jellaby Postlethwaite, the quite too utterly poet,
and appears thus more than fifty times in issues of 1881; returns
to London and meets Constance Mary Lloyd (b. 1858), through Dublin
friends, 1881 [She scarcely ever speaks, I am always wondering
what her thoughts are like]; issues Poems (July 1881)
[var. June], at his own expense; sends copy to Oxford Union, which
is refused after division on morality of collection; forced to leave
accommodation shared with Miles at the instance of the latters
clerical father; moves into his mothers house in London; satirised
in Gilbert and Sullivans Patience as the outrageous
aesthete Reginald Bunthorpe, contrasted with Archibald Grosvenor
as the fleshly and spiritual types of aesthete
respectively, April 1881; American tour proposed by Carte of DOyly
Carte following success of Patience in New York (Sept. 1881);
departs for America on a tour organised by Col. Morse, 24 Dec. 1881;
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1882: programme incls. The
English Renaissance in Art (9 Jan.), lectures revised to suit
his audience as The Decorative Arts, and The House
Beautiful; visits Walt Whitman in company with J. M. Stoddart,
18 Jan. 1882; represents himself as the son of one of Irelands
noblest daughters in St. Paul, Minnesota, St. Patricks
Day, 1882; greeted as Speranzas Boy in San Francisco,
April, 1882 and eulogised Speranza again in his lecture
on The Irish Poets of 48; called epicene
by Bodley in New York Times ; gives total of 140 lectures;
arranges for production of Vera in New York; returns home
with $6,000 in lecture fees and commission to write blank-verse
The Duchess of Padua for American actress Mary Anderson;
visited the room in New York where Poe wrote The Raven
with Tilton, 10 Nov. 1882; issues fourth and fifth revised edns.
of Poems (1882); seeks appointment as a Schools Inspector;
Vera produced unsuccessfully in New York, 1883, with Marie
Prescott as Vera Sabouroff; The Duchess of Padua rejected
by Mary Anderson (We shant be able to dine with the
Duchess tonight, Robert) but published in 1883; |
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commences friendship with his first
biographer Robert Sherard; moved to Paris, Autumn 1882-March 1883;
living at Hotel Voltaire, Rive Gauche; influenced by Paul Verlaine,
whom he met at Café Vachette, as well as Maurice Rollinat,
and Edmond de Goncourt (espec. La Faustin) whom he met
on 21 April 1883, and who characterised him in his Journal
as a creature au sexe douteux; wrote poem about passionate
purity of brown-skinned boys, 1883; meets Victor Hugo, who
nonetheless sleeps at one of his soirées; embarks on new
lecture touring, Personal Impressions of America, adding
to his repertoire, organised again by Col. Morse; proposes to Constance,
Dublin Nov. 1883; m. Constance, 29 May, 1885, she bringing marriage
allowance of £250; honeymoons in Paris and Dieppe, and reads Joris-Karl
Huysmans À Rebours, the record of Des Esseintes
aristocratic life of aesthetic self-indulgence, identifiable with
the poisonous book that Dorian Gray reads in Wildes
novel; Cyril b. 1885; |
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1886: OW moves to 16 Tite
St., Chelsea, 1 Jan. 1886, otherwise The House Beautiful,
designed by Edward William Godwin, arch. and stage-designer, and
decorated in a style the antithesis of Victorian opulence; placed
a bust of Hermes, god of liars and thieves, in his ground-floor
library; lectured on The Value of Art in Modern Life,
and Dress; Vyvyan b. 1886; relations with Constance
cease after difficult birth; OW becomes Robert Rosss - a regular
visitor to the Tite St. house - lover about this time; contributes
articles and essays to The Dramatic Review in 1885-86, The
Pall Mall Gazette in 1885-90, and The Court and Society Review
in 1887, all amounting to some 100 multiple reviews in 1887-88;
compiles list of favourite and least favourite books for Pall
Mall Gazette, Feb. 1886; meets Robert Ross (then 17), who stays
at Tite St. as a paying guest; Wilde probably begins a sexual relationship
with him, 1887; tells Frank Harris that the flowerlike grace
of his wife has given way to something heavy, shapeless, deformed,
1887; invited by Thomas Wemyss Reid, gen. manager of Cassell, to
edit Ladies World, launched in Nov. 1886, and which
Reid reluctantly agreed to rename The Womans World:
A Magazine of Fashion and Society, Spring 1887; |
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OW publishes The Happy Prince
and Other Stories (1888), written not for children but
for childlike people from eighteen to eight; palm read by
Count Louis Hamon, who spoke of impending disaster; presents a copy
to Florence Stoker [sold for $8,500 at Christies, NY, 1984],
and later with a copy of Salomé, my strange
venture in a tongue that is not my own, 1893; Constance initiated
into Golden Dawn (Qui patitur vincit/Who suffers conquers),
1888; refuses prose articles by Edith Somerville for Womens
World, 1888; reviews Mr Froudes Blue Book
[i.e., Two Chiefs of Dunboy ] in Pall Mall Gazette
(13 April 1889); probable affair with John Gray, who later became
a priest; publishes The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (July
1889), an essay proposing that the homsexual love of a youth [viz.,
Willie Hughes] was the subject of the Shakespeares sonnets;
resigns editorship of The Womans World, Oct. 1889;
read and reviewed the Taoist master Zhuangzi (Chuang-Tsu) - a fore-runner
of cultural relativism - in English translation, 1889; attends Parnell
Commission; contributes The Picture of Dorian Gray to
Lippincotts Monthly Magazine at Stoddarts request,
serialised from July 1890 [var. June]; called unmanly, sickening,
vicious by the Athenaeum reviewer and compared in spirit
with the Cleveland St. scandal by the Scots Observer ; |
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1891: publishes The
Soul of Man Under Socialism in Fortnightly Review,
No. 290 (1 Feb. 1891), apparently occasioned by attendance at Fabian
lecture of George Bernard Shaw; enlarged version of The Picture
of Dorian Gray issued in book-form (1891), with 7 additional
chapters and a preface; the Wildes begin to experience social ostracism,
Constance remarking, Since Oscar wrote Dorian Gray,
no one will speak to us; issues Intentions (May 1891),
a collection of essays and dialogues including The Decay of
Lying, first published in The Nineteenth Century, Jan.
1889 - with the epigraph, Lying, the telling of beautiful
untrue things, is the proper aim of Art; The Critic
as Artist [first publ. as The True Function and Value
of Criticism, 2 Pts., 1890], and The Truth of Masks;
commissioned to write new play by George Alexander, 1890; The
Duchess of Padua performed as Guido Ferranti, New York
1891; issues Lord Arthur Saviles Crime and Other Stories
(1891) and A House of Pomegranates (Nov. 1891); commences
writing Lady Windermeres Fan under the working title
of A Good Woman, Summer 1891; |
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issues Lord Arthur Saviles
Crime and Other Stories (July 1891), and is introduced to Lord
Alfred Douglas by Lionel Johnson (Bosie; var. Bosey;
b. 1870), third son of Marquess of Queensberry [John Sholto Douglas],
July 1891; spends season in Paris, Dec. 1891, and meets André
Gide (aetat. 21), on whom he makes a great but troubling impression;
writes Salomé in French [based on narrative in Gospel
acc. St. Matthew, 14], Nov. 1891, and secures Sarah Bernhardt for
the title-role; refused license by the Examiner (E. F. Smyth-Pigott),
and not produced till 11 Feb. 1896 in Paris, and 1905 in London
(Bijou Theatre); Lady Windermeres Fan (West End, London,
Nov. 1892), first produced by actor-manager George Alexander, at
St. James Theatre; issued a limited edn. of his Poems (May
1892); accepts nomination to membership of Irish Literary Society
(London); writing A Woman of No Importance, Norfolk, Aug.-Sept.
1892; Salome [sic] published in English (22 Feb. 1893), in
a translation first made by Bosie but rewritten by Wilde as being
illiterate; A Woman of No Importance produced by Herbert
Beerbohm Tree, with Julia Neilson as Lady Chiltern (Haymarket 19
April 1893; pub. 9 Oct. 1894); rents rooms at 10 & 11 St. Jamess
Place, Oct. 1893; confronted in his library at Tite St. by the Marquess
of Queensberry, the irate father of Douglas, accompanied by a prize
fighter; A Florentine Tragedy, a blank-verse tragedy written
Dec. 1893 and performed in London 1906, English version published
in first collected works, 1908; Bosie invited back to the Wilde
home by Constance on his own pleas; |
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writtes La Sainte Courtisane,
A Woman Covered with Jewels, the story of Myrrhina based on
that of Jezebel; visits Florence, where he meets Gide in July, and
afterwards Monte Carlo, with Douglas, summer 1894; writes Mr.
and Mrs. Daventry (1900) over the name of Frank Harris to whom
he sold the plot, Constance, appearing as Mrs.
Daventry; publication of The Green Carnation by Robert Hichens,
representing Wilde and Douglas as Lord Reggie and Mr. Amarinth,
Sept. 1894; Wilde disowns its authorship in a letter to Pall
Mall Gazette; Douglas, bored on the house at Worthing, insists
on moving to Grand Hotel, Brighton, were Wilde suffers appallingly
from his temper fits; Douglas suffers influenza and is nursed by
Wilde before moving with him to lodgings to complete the new play;
there Wilde suffers influenza alone while Douglas moves back into
the Grand Hotel, Oct. 1894, gloating over his extravagance on Wildes
account in a letter that makes a callous joke of his desertion (When
you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting. The next time
you are ill I will go away at once); death by suicide of Queensberrys
son Drumlanrig, secretly Lord Roseberys lover, 18 Oct. 1894;
The Priest and the Acolyte, an overtly homosexual story
by Jack Bloxam is pubished in The Chameleon (Dec. 1894),
attracting censure from Jerome K. Jerome; |
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1895: rehearsals begin on
An Ideal Husband, Dec. 1894, and opened at Theatre Royal,
Haymarket, 3 Jan. 1895, attended by Prince of Wales, Balfour, Chamberlain,
and other notables; Oscariana, comprising epigrams chosen
by Constance, printed by Arthur Humphreys, Jan. 1895 (but not published
until 1910); Wilde travels to Algeria with Douglas, 17 Jan.-Feb.;
encounters Gidee, also at Bildah - a resort for Englishmen who liked
boys; back in Algiers, Wilde arranges for Gide to have the boy-flautist
he admires, after the departe of Douglas with another youth to Biskra,
in an anger-fit; visited Degas on return trip through Paris (so
much taste will lead to prison); Wildes producer Alexander
cancels Queensberrys ticket to the premier on learning that
he planned a demonstration; The Importance of Being Earnest
opens on St. Valentines Day (14 Feb.); Wilde takes a civil
action against the Marquess of Queensberry under the Libel Act of
1843, arising from the latters visiting card left at his club
the Albemarle on 18 Feb. 1895 inscribed To Oscar Wilde posing
somdomite [sic]; Queensberry arrested and charged with libel
at Vine St., 2 March; |
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Dearest Bobbie, since I last saw
you something has happened. Bosies father has left a
card at my club with hideous words on it. I don't see anything
now but a criminal prosecution. My whole life has been ruined
by this man. (Letter to Robert Ross, in Selected
Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis, OUP
1979, p.129.) |
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failure of his civil suit against
Queensberry, 3-5 April, 1895, conducted by Sir Edward Clarke, QC,
MP, with Edward Carson defending Queensberry by ruthlessly cross-examining
Wilde on his aesthetic opinions, first, and afterwards on his behaviour
with young men; Wilde lies about his age and stumbles fatally over
a question regarding his kissing or not kissing apeculiarly
plain boy [Walter Grainger]; Carson said to have remarked
afterwards, I have just ruined the most brilliant man in London;
Wilde withdraws on third day of questioning; Clarke seeks to settle
for verdict of not guilty against Queensberry regarding accusation
of posing; Carson insists that Queensberry be exonerated
on basis of justification by the facts; Queensberry instructs his
solicitors to send the file to the Director of Public Prosecutions;
Wilde unable to find hotel accommodation and stays with his friend
Ada (The Sphinx) Leverson and her husband; Scotland
Yard inspector appears before Magistrate John Bridges requesting
warrant for Wildes arrest; court adjourned for an hour and
half, supposedly to permit Wilde to leave England; |
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Wilde remains in London and is
arrested at Cadogan Hotel, Sloane St., under Criminal Law Amendment
Act (1885), 5 April; passes some nights in Bow St. and later removed
to Holloway Prison during hearings; first hearing before Grand Jury,
6 April, with others on 11, 18, & 23 April; Queensberry being
awarded costs of £600 and insisting on payment, Wilde was
declared bankrupt and required to undergo sale of household goods,
to be auctioned to order of the Sheriff, 24 April 1895 - incl. 2,000
books sold for £130, and the writing-table of Thomas Carlyle
(prominently listed on auction bill); tried in criminal court, 26
April-1 May 1895; freed on bail after jury disagreement arising
from his spirited defence of male friendship (I think it is
perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a
young man); accedes to his mothers request that he stay
in England; wrote to Douglas that he had decided it was nobler
and more beautiful to stay [than assume] a false name, a disguise,
a hunted life - all that is not for me; bankruptcy hearing,
1895; second criminal trial, 20-25 May, 1895, Sir Frank Lockwood
[Solicitor-General] leading for the Crown, possibly under political
instructions in view of forthcoming elections and (more conjecturally)
a threat of disclosure concerning Lord Roseberys affair with
Queensberrys eldest son; |
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There is a documented account of the trials of Oscar Wilde
at Missouri-Kansas City University - online. |
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Constance sends sons to Switzerland,
but remains herself until end of trial; Wilde found guilty of gross
indecency [homosexual acts not amounting to buggery]
and sentenced by Mr. Justice Jerome Willis to two years hard
labour under the terms of Labouchières Criminal Law
Amendment Act of 1885 - a so-called a blackmailers charter,
25 May 1895, with remarks: and that you, Mr. Wilde, have been
the centre of a circle of extensive corruption of the most hideous
kind among young men, it is clearly impossible to doubt; his
name effaced on Scholars Board at Portora (finally reinstated
in 1930); taken to Holloway and transferred to Pentonville, Nov.
1895, then moved to Wandsworth after six months, and finally to
Reading Prison, being spat upon at Clapham Junction; suffered extremely
under pre-Prison Reform conditions, picking oakum and treading the
mill; received kindness from Warder Martin at Reading (a man
who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age);
held in cell C.3.3; suffered from diarrheoia, insomnia, and recurrence
of earlier abscess in ear; declared bankrupt while in prison; |
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1896: Constance travels
from Genoa to inform him of the death of Lady Wilde (3 Feb.), only
to learn that he already knew having seen her spirit in his cell,
1896; Salomé performed in Paris, 1896 (in English
1905); petitioned Home Secretary for release from Reading Gaol on
the grounds that his crime was due to curable sexual pathology not
malice; writes self-exculpatory letter to Lord Alfred, later known
as De Profundis - acknowledging faults (not those cited in
the courtroom) but withholding penitence while vindicating the authors
individuality, 1896-97; envisaged by Wilde as Epistola, in
Carcare et Vinculis, accusing Douglas of a terrible
lack of imagination, the one really fatal defect of your character;
instructs Robert Ross to copy it and convey original to Douglas;
Ross preserves the original while Douglas angrily destroys the copy;
first published by Ross in an abridged form as De Profundis
(1905); writes letters to probation board seeking early release
in view of sufferings, but refused on the score of his own eloquence;
overhears the screams of demented soldier being whipped with 20
lashes on instructions of visiting JP some days before his release;
witnesses three children being prepared for incarceration for poaching
rabbits, and writes two letters to Daily Chronicle (i.e.,
28 May 1897 and another) to raise money for payment of their fines;
released from prison, 19 May 1897; moves immediately to France,
settling at first at Berneval-sur-Mer, nr. Dieppe (I wrote
when I did not know life. Now that I know life I have no more to
write); |
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adopts pseudonym Sebastian
Melmoth; leave Berneval for Naples, Sept. 1897; embroiled
in rivalry between his former lovers, Douglas and Robert Ross -
the latter contending that Douglas dragged [Wilde] back to
homsexual practices; joins Douglas in France and travels with
him to Italy, further alienating Constance; moves to Paris alone,
Feb. 1898; as C.3.3 [his prison number] pseudo-anonymously
issues The Ballad of Reading Gaol (Feb. 1898), being published
by Leonard Smithers to whom Wilde had been reintroduced by Beardsley
at Dieppe; first edn. of 400 copies; reaches six edns. in the ensuing
three months; death of Constance resulting from surgical operation
in Italy, 7 April 1898; befriended by Harold Mellor, a young English
gentleman, and travelled with him to La Napoule in Nice, where he
met and embraced Sarah Bernhardt, then playing in La Tosca;
visits Cannes; writes a second letter to Daily Chronicle
indicting British prison system for cruelty and stupidity stemming
from [entire] want of imagination; publication of The
Importance of Being Earnest (Feb. 1899) and An Ideal Husband
(July 1899); travels to S. France but settles at Hotel dAlsace,
Paris, 1900; undergoes surgery for recurrent ear infection aggrevated
by fall in prison; |
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1900: dies of pyogenic encephalitic
[cerebral] meningitis, 1.50 p.m., 30 Nov., at Hotel dAlsace;
baptised a Catholic on the night before his death, being attended
by a Dublin Passionate priest whom Robert Ross had fetched at his
request; bur. in paupers grave [enterrement de sixième
classe] at Bagneux outside the walls of Paris, and reinterred
in Cimetière Père Lachaise [Ave. Carette, Plot 89,
between Jean Chaptal and Le Royer], with modernist monument in the
form of an angel by Jacob Epstein, commissioned after the sale of
his works by Ross on completion payments, 1909; the role of first
biographer assumed captured by R. H. Sherard (Oscar Wilde,
1902) whose further writings naively defended him against revelations
made by Gide and Harris; Robert Ross publishes De Profundis
(1905, with 45 edns. to 1925), and the Collected Works (1908);
the standard biography is Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde (1987),
though erroneously attributing his death to syphilis - a theory
promulgated by Arthur Ransome; Peter Hall revived The Importance
of Being Earnest successfully at the National Theatre, 1982;
a stained-glass window dedicated to Wilde in Poets Corner,
Westminster Abbey, 14 Feb. 1995, the 100th anniversary of the opening
of The Importance of Being Earnest; |
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There is an account of Oscar prison conditions
in Pentonville Prison as reported in the Chicago Tribune
(23 June 1895). His sentence to hard labour
involved 4 hours a day on the treadmill - full details of
which are given in the archived pages online
(accessed 31.05.2017). |
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Lord Douglas unsuccessfully sued
Robert Ross for libel, 1914; one of Wildes sons, Cyril, was
killed by a snipers bullet in the WWI; Robert Ross died in
1918; early biographers and memoirists incl. Frank Harris (1916),
Vyvyan Holland (1954), Hesketh Pearson (1946), Montgomery Hyde (1975),
Sheridan Morley (1976); versions of the life of Wilde have been
rendered in modern Irish plays such as Micheàl MacLiammóirs
one-man show The Importance of Being Oscar (1960) Terry Eagletons
Saint Oscar (1989), Tom Kilroys The Secret Fall
of Constance Wilde (1997), and novels such as Jamie ONeills
At Swim Two Boys ( 2001) and Colm Toííns
The Master (2004) - both cameos; the entry in Dictionary
of Irish Biography (RIA 2009) is by Owen Dudley Edwards; the
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations has 59 items under Wilde;
Wilde now seen as anticipating major trends of later cultural criticism
including post-modernism and gay theory; trusts established to erect
statues to Wilde in London and Dublin, resulting in monuments by
Maggi Hambling (London) and Danny Osborne (Merrion Sq., Dublin),
1997; his papers are partly held in NYPL; there is a life of Constance
Wilde by Franny Moyle (2011); A Woman of No Importance was
revived by Patrick Mason at the Gate Th. (Dublin) in Summer-Autumn
2012 with Ingrid Craigie in the title role. PI JMC ODNB NCBE
ODQ DIB DIW DIH DIL OCTH OCEL SUTH FDA DUB OCIL |
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[Inscription: The following Latin words was engraved on Wilde’s gravestone at Bagneux from where his remains were removed to Père Lachaise in 1909: ‘ Verbis meis addere nihil audebant et super illos stillebat eloquium sum [To my words they durst add nothing and my speech dropped upon them]’ (Job 29: 22). See Kevin Barry, ed., Occasional Critical and Political Writings [&c.] of James Joyce, Oxford: OUP 2000, p.327, n.12. - being a note on Oscar Wilde: the Poet of Salomé in the same volume.
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[ top ]
Works
Published works
Poetry |
- Poems (London: David Bogue 1881, 2nd. Edn. 1882) [infra],
and Do . [Authors Edition] (London: Elkin
Mathews & John Lane 1892), with new title-page by Charles
Ricketts;
- Poems, 1892 [Decadents, Symbolists, Anti-Decadents, Poetry
of the 1890s] (Spelsbury, Woodstock Books 1995), 234pp.
- The / Ballad of Reading Gaol / By / C.3.3.
(London, Royal Arcade: Leonard Smithers 1898); other edns. inc.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (London: Duckworth 1997), ill.
by Brian Lalor; The Ballad of Reading Gaol [Decadents,
Symbolists, Anti-Decadents, Poetry of the 1890s Ser.] (Spelsbury,
Woodstock Books 1995), 31pp.
- The Poems of Oscar Wilde (London: Methuen 1908);
- Albert Camus, trans., Oscar Wilde: ballade de la geole de
Reading (Paris: Falaize 1952).
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Plays (first editions) |
- Salomé ([Paris:] Librairie de lart independant
1893) [in French];
- Salomé: A Tragedy in One Act: Translated from the
French of Oscar Wilde (London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane;
Boston: Copeland & Day 1894) [in English], ill. [by Aubrey
Beardsley - the genitals being bowlderised in this edn. and restored
in 1906];
- A Woman of No Importance (London: Smithers 1894);
- Lady Windermeres Fan (London: Elkin Mathews &
John Lane 1893);
- The Sphinx (London: John Lane 1894);
- An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest
(1895) ;
- An Ideal Husband (London: Smithers 1899);
- The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People (London: Smithers 1899).
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Early reprints |
- The Duchess of Padua [and] Salome (NY: F.M. Buckles
& Co. 1906), 120, 60pp. [sep. t.p. and pag. for each; DP
in anon. English trans. from the German trans. of M. Meyerfeld];
- A Florentine Tragedy (Boston & London: J. V. Luce
1908).
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Scholarly editions (plays) |
- Sarah A. Dickson, ed., The Importance of Being Earnest
[
] in Four Acts as Originally Written by Oscar
Wilde [New York Public Library Arents Collection 1956, No.
6] (NYPL 1956);
- Vyvyan Holland, ed. The Importance of Being Earnest (London:
Butler & Tanner 1957);
- Vincent F. Hopper & Gerald B. Lahey, eds., The Importance
of Being Earnest [Barrons Educ. Series] (NY: Barron
1959);
- H. Montgomery Hyde, intro., The Complete Plays of Oscar Wilde
[Methuen World Classics/Methuens World Dramatists] (London:
Methuen 1976, 1988), xi, 606pp. [contents];
- Jackson Russell, ed., The Importance of Being Earnest
(London: Benn 1980);
- Joseph Bristow, ed., The Importance of Being Earnest
and Related Writings (London: Routledge 1992), 271pp.;
- The Importance of Being Earnest [1st pub. 1899; World
Classics] (OUP 1995);
- Joseph Donohue & Ruth Berggen, eds., Oscar Wildes
The Importance of Being Earnest: A Reconstructive Critical
Edition of the Text of the First Production [...; [ &c
.] [Princess Grace Irish Library, Monaco] (Gerrards Cross: Colin
Smythe 1995), 378pp. + 158 ills [maps, notes, &c.];
- William Tydeman & Steven Price, eds., Salomé
(Cambridge UP 1996), 226pp.;
- Francis Miriam Reed, ed. & intro., Vera; or, The Nihilists
([Harvard]: Mellen Press, 1989) [final version as presented at
its premiere Aug. 20th 1883 at Union Square Theatre in New York
City].
- Peter Raby, ed., Lady Windermeres Fan [1st pub.
1893]; Salomé [1st pub. 1894]; A Woman of No
Importance [1st pub. 1894]; An Ideal Husband [1st pub.
1894] (Oxford Edns.).
|
Prose |
Fiction |
- The Happy Prince and Other Tales (London: Nutt 1888)
[The Happy Prince; The Nightingale and the Rose;
The Selfish Giant; The Devoted Friend;
The Remarkable Rocket]; Do. [another edn.]
as The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde (Aldershot: Ashgate 2007),
viii, 194pp. [incorp. The happy prince and other tales
[comprising] The happy prince; The nightingale and the rose; The
selfish giant; The devoted friend; The remarkable rocket. A
house of pomegranates [being] The young king; The birthday
of the infanta ; The fisherman and his soul; The star-child.]
-
The Picture of Dorian Gray (London:
Ward & Lock 1891), vii, 334pp. Ltd. edn. de luxe of 250
copies, each numbered & signed by the author; printed on
large Van Gelder hand-made paper; see further editions];
-
Lord Arthur Saviles Crime and other
Stories (London: McIlvaine 1891);
-
House of Pomegranites (London: James
R. Osgood, MIlvaine & Co. 1891), title-page design
by Charles Ricketts & C. H. Shannon [The Young King;
The Birthday of the Infanta; The Star-Child;
The Fisherman and his Soul (ded. to HSH Alice, Princess
of Monaco)];
-
Lord Arthur Saviles Crime: A Study
of Duty [with] The Portrait of W. H., and Other Stories
(London: Methuen 1909) [1887; collected 1891; 1889; 1908 Edns.;
on handmade paper and Japanese vellum 1908] this edn. incl.
The Canterville Ghost; The Sphinx without a Secret;
The Model Millionaire]
|
Essays (incl. De Profundis) |
- Intentions (London: Leipzig, Heinemann & Balestier
1891) [The Decay of Lying, The Critic as Artist,
and The Truth of Masks; see details];
- The Soul of Man Under Socialism (London [printed priv.]
1904) [first pub. in Fortnightly Review, No. 290, 1 Feb.
1891 pp.292-319]; see editions];
- De Profundis (London: Methuen 1905) [see editions];
|
Lectures |
- Michael J. ONeill, Irish Poets of the Nineteenth
Century: Unpublished Lecture Notes of a speech by Oscar Wilde
at San Francisco, in University Review, 1, 4 (1955),
pp.29-33.
- Irish Poets and Poetry in the Nineteenth Century, Delivered
in Platts Hall, San Francisco on Wednesday, April fifth,
1882, edited from Wildes Manuscript and Reconstructed,
in part, from Contemporary Newspaper Accounts, with an Introduction
and Biographical Notes ed. R. D. Pepper (SF: Book Club of California
1972), p.29.
- Kevin H. F. OBrien, An Edition of Oscar Wildes
American Lectures (Ph.D.; Notre Dame Univ. 1973);
|
Notebooks |
- Philip E. Smith II & Michael S. Helfand, ed. & comm.,
Oscar Wildes Oxford Notebooks: A Portrait of Mind in
the Making [Oxford Notebooks] (OUP 1989), xviii, 256pp., ill.
[1 pl/. port.], 25 cm.
|
Literary criticism |
- Reviews [of Oscar Wilde] (London: Methuen 1908);
- Richard Ellmann, ed., The Artist as Critic: The Critical
Writings of Oscar Wilde (NY: Random House 1969; London: W.
H. Allen 1970; new eds. 1987, &c.);
- Isobel Murray, ed., Wilde, Man Under Socialism and Prison
Writings (Oxford: OUP 1990);
- John Wyse Jackson, ed., Aristotle at Afternoon Tea: The Rare
Oscar Wilde (London: Fourth Estate 1991);
- John Wyse Jackson, The Uncollected Oscar Wilde (London:
Fourth Estate 1995), 240pp.
|
Arts reviews (selected) |
- The Grosvenor Gallery, Dublin University Magazine,
Vol. 90 (July 1877, p.125 [see notes, infra];
- The Rout of the RA, in Court and Society Review,
Vol. IV (27 April 1887) [rep. in Ellmann, ed., The Artist as
Critic, W. H. Allen 1970].
|
|
Letters |
- Rupert Hart-Davis, ed., The Letters of Oscar Wilde (London:
Hart-Davis; NY: Brace, Harcourt & World 1962), xxv, 958pp,
35 ills.; Do., ed. Merlin Holland & Rupert Hart-Davis
(Fourth Estate 2000), 1,270pp.;
- Rupert Hart-Davis, ed., Selected Letters of Oscar Wilde
(Oxford: OUP 1979), 432pp. [based in The Letters of Oscar
Wilde, 1962; authoritative editions of incls. De Profundis.]
- Merlin Holland & Rupert Hart-Davis, eds., The Complete
Letters of Oscar Wilde (London Fourth Estate 2001), 1,270pp.
[incls. De Profundis]
|
Anthologies & Collections |
- Richard Aldington, ed., The Portable Oscar Wilde (NY:
Viking Press 1946), Do ., rev. Stanley Weintraub (Harmondsworth:
Penguin 1977);
- Kingsley Amis, ed., Poems and Essays by Oscar Wilde (London:
Collins 1956);
- Owen Dudley Edwards, Fireworks &c . (London: Barrie
& Jenkins 1959), 282pp.;
- Graham Hough, Selections form the Works of Oscar Wilde
(NY: Dell 1960);
- Richard Ellmann, ed., Oscar Wilde: Selected Writings
(Oxford: OUP 1961);
- Isobel Murray, ed., Plays, Prose Writings and Poems (London:
Dent 1975);
- Merlin Holland, ed., Wilde Anthology (London: Collins
Gem [1997]), 32pp.;
- Robert Pearce, The Best of Wilde (London: Duckworth 1997),
182pp.;
- Alaistar Rolfe, ed., Wilde, Nothing ... Except My Genius
(Harmondsworth: Penguin 1997), 81pp.;
- Stephen Calloway, ed., Wilde - Oscariana: The Wit
and Maxims of Oscar Wilde (London: Orion 1997), 111pp.;
- Merlin Holland, ed., The Oscar Wilde Anthology (London:
HarperCollins 2000), 288pp.
|
|
Collected editions |
- [Oscar Fingall OF. Wilde, Essays, Criticisms and Reviews;
Now First Collected [from The Womens world] (London
1901), 25 cm. [on antique laid paper];
- The Best of Oscar Wilde; being a collection of the best poems
and prose extracts of the writer, ed. O[scar] Herrmann &
W[ill] W[ellington] Massee (NY [1905]), q.pp.;
- Alfred Neumann, trans. [Complete Works], 7 vols. ([Berlin:]
Wiener Verlag 1908);
- Robert Ross, ed., Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, 15 vols.
(London: Methuen 1908-1922) [contents]; Do.,
in 10 vols. (NY: Doubleday 1921); Do., rep. as The First
Collected Edition of the Works of Oscar Wilde [1908-1922]
(London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1969), and Do. [facs. rep. of 1908
Edn.], intro. by Joseph Bristow (London: Routledge 1993) [identical
contents by vols.];
- Vyvyan Holland, intro., The Complete Works [1948] (Glasgow:
Collins 1966) [see details];
- Complete Works of Oscar Wilde [Vol. 3 - Poems, Essays
and Letters (London: Heron Books 1966), 498pp.;
- G. F. Maine, ed., The Works of Oscar Wilde (London &
Glasgow: Collins 1948) [var. 1968];
- Isobel Murray [Univ. of Aberdeen], ed., The Complete Shorter
Fiction of Oscar Wilde [Worlds Classics] (Oxford: OUP
1979), 278pp.;
- The Works of Oscar Wilde [Golden Heritage Series] (London:
Galley Press 1987) [imprint of W. H. Smith], 1114pp. [see contents];
- Isobel Murray, ed., The Writings of Oscar Wilde (Oxford:
OUP 1989), xxii, 639pp. [see contents];
- Terry Eagleton, ed. & intro., Plays, Prose Writing and
Poems of Oscar Wilde [Everyman] (London: J. M. Dent 1991),
480pp.;
- The Works of Oscar Wilde : Stories; Plays and Poems, Essays
and Letters [3 vols.] (London: Folio Society 1993) [issued
with slipcase];
- Merlin Holland, ed., Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (London:
HarperCollins 1994), 1334pp.;
- H. Montgomery Hyde, ed. & intro., The Complete Plays
(London: Methuen 1988), 606pp.;
- Ian Small, ed., Complete Short Fiction (Harmondsworth:
Penguin 1994), 288pp. [anticipates full multi-vol. edition of
works];
- Anne Varty, intro. & annot., Collected Poems of Oscar
Wilde [Wordsworth Poetry Library] (Ware: Wordsworth Editions
2000), xxvi, 182pp.; Do. (NY: Henry Holt 2000), 1,270pp. [cream
heavy card boards with gilt lettering to black cloth spine];
- Merlin Holland & Rupert Hart-Davis, eds., The Complete
Letters of Oscar Wilde (London: ) Fourth Estate 2000), xxvi,
1,270pp.
- The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (New Lanark: Geddes
& Grosset 2001), 384pp..
- Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the
Stories and the Essays including De Profundis
[Wordsworth Library Collection] (Ware: Wordsworth Edns. 1997,
2007), 954pp. [1098pp.; see contents];
- The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde [Variorum Edition;
Oxford English Texts ser.], gen. ed. Russel Jackson & Ian
Small [later Ian Small solo], 4 vols. (2000- ) [see contents].
|
Also The Portable Oscar Wilde (NY: Viking Press
1946); Richard Ellmann, ed., Albemarle Club Edition of the Works
(Ellmann 1987), 411pp.;
|
|
Journal Articles |
- Oscar at Oxford, in New York Review of Books,
31 (29 March 1984), pp.23-28;
- Wilde in New York: Beauty Packed Them 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;
- [Q.auth.,] The Uses of Decadence: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce,
in Ceri Crossley & Ian Small, eds., in Studies in Anglo-French
Cultural Relations: Imagining France [lecture at Bennington
College in Ben Bullit Lectureship ser.] (London: Macmillan, 1988).
|
[ top ]
Bibliographical
details
Poems
(London 1882; 2nd Edn.) - Contents. ELEUTHERIA : Hélas,
Sonnet to Liberty, Ave Imperatrix, To
Milton, Louis Napoleon, Sonnet on the Massacre
of the Christians in Bulgaria; Quantum Mutata, Libertatis
Sacra Fames, Theoretikos; [also] The Garden of Eros.
ROSA MYSTICA: Requiescat, Sonnet on Approaching
Italy, San Miniato, Ave Maria Gratia Plena,
Italia, Sonnet Written in Holy Week at Genoa,
Rome Unvisited, Urbs Sacra Aeterna, Sonnet
on Hearing the Dies Irae Sung in the Sistine Chapel, Easter
Day, E Tenebris, Vita Nuova, Madonna
Mia, The New Helen; [also] The Burden of Itys. WILD
FLOWERS : Impression du Matin, Magdalen Walks,
Athanasia, Serenade, Endymion,
La Bella Donna Della Mia Mente, Chanson; [also]
Charmides. FLOWERS OF GOLD : Impressions, The
Grave of Keats, Theocritus, In the Gold
Room, Ballade de Marguerite, The Dole of
the Kings Daughter, Amor Intellectualis,
Santa Decca, A Vision, Impression
de Voyage, The Grave of Shelley, By the
Arno. IMPRESSIONS DE THÉÂTRE: Fabien dei Franchi,
Phèdre [ded. Sarah Bernhardt], Portia,
Queen Henrietta Maria, Camma; [also] Panthea.
THE FOURTH MOVEMENT : Impression, Le Réveillon,
At Verona, Apologia, Quia Multum Amavi,
Silentium Amoris, Her Voice, My Voice,
Taedium Vitae; [also] The Harlots House, Humanitad,
GLUKUIIIKROS ERWS, From Spring Days to Winter,
Ailinon, ailinon eipe, no deu
nikatw, Fantaises Décoratives, Canzonet,
Symphony in Yellow, In the Forest, To
My Wife, T. L. L., Désespoir,
Pan, Ravenna, The Sphinx, The
Ballad of Reading Gaol. POEMS IN PROSE: The Artist, The
Doer of Good, The Disciple, The Master,
The House of Judgement, The Teacher of Wisdom. |
|
Intentions
(London: Leipzig, Heinemann & Balestier 1891) - contains The
Decay of Lying, first published in The Nineteenth Century,
Jan. 1889 - with the epigram, Lying, the telling of beautiful
untrue things, is the proper aim of Art; The Critic
as Artist, first publ. as The True Function and Value
of Criticism, 2 Pts., 1890], and The Truth of Masks.] |
[ top ]
The
Picture of Dorian Gray - chief editions
|
- The Picture of Dorian Gray, serialised in Lippincotts
Monthly Magazine, 46, 271 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott;
London: Ward, Lock & Co. 1890), 174pp., ill. 24 cm. [contains
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde [complete],
pp.3-100 [USA edn. 25 cents; with [24]pp. of adverts. bound in
at front and [28]pp. at back - see COPAC online;
accessed 08.11.2009);
- Do. (London: Ward & Lock 1891), vii, 334pp. [ltd.
de luxe edn. of 250 copies, each numbered & signed by the
author, printed on large Van Gelder hand-made paper] (Mason 328);
- Do. (Evelyn Nash & Grayson Ltd. [nd.);
- Do., ed. Robert Ross (London: Simpkin, Marshall &
Co. 1910) [other edns., 1913, 1917, 1926 &c.];
- Do. [Nashs Famous Fiction Library] (London: Eveleigh
Nash & Grayson, [1928]), 320pp.; [see note]
- Do., ed & intro. by A. J. A Symons [Chelsea Edn.
of the Works of Wilde] (London : Methuen & Co., 1932), xiv,
294pp. [21 unbound gatherings];
- Do., ed. by Robert Ross (London: Simpkin, Marshall &
Co. 1910, 1913, 1917, 1926), 251pp., [...]
- Peter Faulkner, ed., The Picture of Dorian Gray ([1891]
[Everyman Edn.] (London: J. M. Dent 1993), 207pp.;
- Picture of Dorian Gray [1890] (London: Thrift Edns. 1994).
- Isobel Murray, ed., Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
(OUP 1974), xxxiv, 249pp. [Bibl. xxix-xxx]; Do. (OUP 1981,
1998), xxiv, 195pp. [Bibl. xix];
- Donald A. Lawler, ed., The Picture of Dorian Gray: Authoritative
Texts, Backgrounds, Reviews and Reactions, Criticism [Norton
Critical Edn.] (NY & London: Norton & Co. 1988) [facs.
of Lippincott Monthly Magazine version];
|
Foreign editions [incl.]
|
- Do., in German trans. by Johannes Gaulke as Das
Bildnis von Dorian Gray (Leipzig: Max Spohr 1901);and Do.,
[ed. Ross; another edn.] (Ye Olde Paris Booke-shoppe (1913),
xi, 352pp.;
- Do., with an introd. by André Maurois (NY: Case,
Lockwood and Brainard for Limited Editions Club 1957), xv, 286pp.,
col. ill. ill. [by Lucille Corcos]; 29 cm.
|
Eveleigh & Nash -
Nashs Famous Fiction Library: the series incls. titles
by Hall Caine ( Shadow of a Crime); R. L. Stevenson ( New
Arabian Nights); Arnold Bennett ( The Grand Hotel Babylon);
Joseph Conrad ( Tales of Unrest); B. M. Croker ( The Catspaw);
Henry de Vere Stacpoole ( The Pools of Silence; The Drums
of War); Grant Richards ( Caviare); A. Conan Doyle ( The
Hound of the Baskervilles; The Lost World); Sheridan
Le Fanu ( In a Glass Darkly); Samuel Butler ( The Way of
All Flesh); Sinclair Lewis ( Babbitt), et al. [Horace
Vaachell, Fannie Hurst, Maurice le Blanc, Baroness Orczy, Walter
Besant, E. W. Hornung, Hugh Conway, Gaston Leroux, Gerald Biss,
Douglas Sladen, W. B. Maxwell, Mrs Belloc Lowndes, Rita,
&c. ] |
[ top ]
The Soul of Man Under
Socialism, first pub. in Fortnightly Review, No. 290
(Feb. 1891), pp.292-319; The Soul of Man under Socialism [in
book-form]; (London [printed priv.] 1904) [i.e, Wright & Jones], [2],
87, [1]p., 20cm. [ltd. edn. of 25 printed on deckle-edged laid paper;
unauthorised rep.]; Do. [another edn.; pirated] (Edinburgh [priv.]
printed by The Riverside Press of W. H. White 1904), [2], 87, [1]p.
[ltd. edn. of 250; engrav. by H. J. F. Badeley]; issued as The soul
of man under socialism, The socialist ideal-art, and The
coming solidarity. By O. Wilde, W. Morris, W. C. Owen [NY: 1891,
1892), 23cm.; wrappers dated Wrappers dated 15 Mar. 1891., Jan. 1892;
?actually 1906]; Do. [unauthorised] (Greenwich, Conn. : The Literary
Collector Press 1905), 120pp. [15cm.; ltd. edn. of 500 on Enfield paper];
Do. (Portland, Maine: Thomas B. Mosher MDCCCCV [1905]; 3rd edn.
1909; see note, infra); Do., with a preface
by Robert Ross (London 1917) [on laid paper, 17cm.]; Do. [new
imp.], with a new preface by Robert Ross (London: A. L. Humphreys 1919),
x, 99; Do. [authorised edn.] Boston 1910); Do., [Porcupine
Pamphlets, No. 1] (London 1948), 8°.
Thomas Mosher (Portland,
Maine), cites edns. of Soul of Man Under Socialism: First
edition (600 copies), 1905 [On Van Gelder handmade paper; 16cm.];
second edition (600 copies), 1907; third edition (600 copies), 1909.
[cited in COPAC.] Note: The 1905 edn. is available online
[21.10.2010].
Do. [Soul of Man], in The Importance
of Being Earnest and Related Writings, ed. Joseph Bristow [Routledge
English Texts] London: Routledge 1992), ix, 271pp. [incls. Phrases
and philosophies for the use of young; few maxims for
the instruction of the over-educated; The Gribsby episode;
The critic as artist; The soul of man under socialism;
Bibliography, pp.232-34.]; Linda Dowling, ed., The Soul of Man
under Socialism and Selected Critical Prose [Penguin Classics]
(London: Penguin 2001), xxviii, 379pp. [20cm.]; incls. The Portrait
of Mr W.H., Wildes defence of Dorian Gray, reviews, and
the writings The Decay of Lying, Pen, Pencil, Poison,
and The Critic as Artist (all from Intentions, 1891).
Also in Collected Writings [var. edns., as supra], and sundry
modern selections of Socialist-Anarchist writing.
De Profundis
(London: Methuen 1905), and Do ., rep. in Rupert Hart-Davis,
ed., The Letters of Oscar Wilde (London: Hart-Davis 1962) [corrected
from MS]; Colm Tóibín, ed. & intro., De Profundis
and Other Prison Writings [Penguin Classics] (Penguin Books 2013),
xxxii, 266pp.; De Profundis, with notes by Rupert Hart-Davis,
an essay by W. H. Auden and The ballad of Reading Gaol. (London: Duckworth
2017), 219pp. See Notes > De Profundis - infra.
See also Oscar Wilde, De Profundis: A Facsimile
of the Original Manuscript, intro. by Merlin Holland (British
Library 2001), 80pp. [all presum. 2001].
[ top ]
Robert Ross, ed., Works
of Oscar Wilde, 15 vols. (London: Methuen 1908-1922) - CONTENTS.
Vol. 1: The Duchess of Padua; Vol. 2: Salomé, A Florentine
Tragedy, and Vera or The Nihilists; Vol. 3: Lady Windermeres
Fan; Vol. 4: A Woman of No Importance; Vol. 5: An Ideal
Husband; Vol. 6: The Importance of Being Earnest; Vol. 7:
Lord Arthur Saviles crime and other Prose Pieces; Vol.
8: Intentions; and, The Soul of Man Under Socialism; Vol. 9:
Poems; Vol. 10: House of Pomegranates; The Happy Prince and
Other Tales; Vol. 11: De Profundis; Vol. 12: The Picture
of Dorian Gray; and, For Love of the King [A Burmese Mask];
Vol. 13: Reviews; Vol. 14: Miscellanies; Vol. 15: Bibliography
by Stuart Mason. Ditto vols. in [rep. edn.] (London: Dawson of Pall
Mall 1969). Bibl. details on the Dawsons title-page verso [facing
Methuen title-page, as follows: The volume devoted to Dorian Gray
includes a unique preface by Ross in the form of a note explaining that
the sole object of my intrusion [...] is to express my very best
thanks to Mr Charles Carrington the publisher and owner of Dorian
Gray for permitting it to appear in the uniform edition of Oscar
Wildes authentic works - an edition which would have otherwise
been incomplete. The title page of same [facing], shows the imprint:
Paris, Charles Carrington, 13 Montmartre 1908. Bibl. lists
Oscar Wilde, For the Love of the King: A Burmese Mask (London
Dawsons 1969); De Profundis (London: Methuen 1925; 1945); Ballad
of Reading Gaol (London; Methuen 1910); Dorian Gray (London,
July 1890); Do. [1st edn.] with preface and 7 add. chaps (1891);
Do. (Paris: Charles Carrington, 13 Fauberg Montmartre 1908).
The Complete Works
of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Collins 1948); another edn., intro.
by Vyvyan Holland (Collins 1966); Do., ed. Vyvyan & Merlin
Holland, et al. [Centenary Edn.] (Glasgow: HarperCollins 1999), ix,
1268pp, ill. [[16]p of plates]; Do. [5th corr. edn.] (Glasgow:
HarperCollins 2005), ix, 1268pp., ill.; and Do., as The
Complete Oscar Wilde (CRW 2010), q.pp.; Complete Works [Collins
classics; New & expanded edn.] (London: HarperCollins 1994), ix,1268p.
The Works of Oscar Wilde
[Golden Heritage Series] (London: Galley Press 1987) [imprint of W.
H. Smith], 1114pp. CONTENTS. Stories: The Picture of Dorian
Gray; Lord Arthur Saviles Crime; The Canterville
Ghost; The Sphinx Without a Secret; The Model Millionaire.
A HOUSE OF POMEGRANITES: The Young King; The
Birthday of the Infanta; The Fisherman and his Soul;
The Star-Child; The Happy Prince; The
Selfish Giant; The Devoted Friend; The Remarkable
Rocket. Plays. The Importance of Being Earnest; Lady Windermeres
Fan; An Ideal Husand; Salomé; The Duchess of Padua; Vera, or
The Nihilists; A Florentine Tragedy; La Sainte Courtisane. Poems.
ELEUTHERIA: Hélas, Sonnet to Liberty,
Ave Imperatrix, To Milton, Louis Napoleon,
Sonnet on the Massacre of the Christians in Bulgaria; Quantum
Mutata, Libertatis Sacra Fames, Theoretikos;
[also] The Garden of Eros. ROSA MYSTICA : Requiescat,
Sonnet on Approaching Italy, San Miniato, Ave
Maria Gratia Plena, Italia, Sonnet Written in
Holy Week at Genoa, Rome Unvisited, Urbs Sacra
Aeterna, Sonnet on Hearing the Dies Irae Sung in the Sistine
Chapel, Easter Day, E Tenebris, Vita
Nuova, Madonna Mia, The New Helen; [also] The
Burden of Itys. WILD FLOWERS : Impression du Matin, Magdalen
Walks, Athanasia, Serenade, Endymion,
La Bella Donna Della Mia Mente, Chanson; [also] Charmides.
FLOWERS OF GOLD: Impressions, The Grave of
Keats, Theocritus, In the Gold Room, Ballade
de Marguerite, The Dole of the Kings Daughter,
Amor Intellectualis, Santa Decca, A Vision,
Impression de Voyage, The Grave of Shelley,
By the Arno. IMPRESSIONS DE THÉÂTRE
: Fabien dei Franchi, Phèdre [ded. Sarah Bernhardt],
Portia, Queen Henrietta Maria, Camma;
[also] Panthea. THE FOURTH MOVEMENT: Impression: Le Réveillon,
At Verona, Apologia, Quia Multum Amavi,
Silentium Amoris, Her Voice, My Voice,
Taedium Vitae; [also] The Harlots House,
Humanitad, GLUKUIIIKROS EROS, From Spring
Days to Winter, Ailinon, ailinon, eipe, no deu
nikato, Fantaises Décoratives, Canzonet,
Symphony in Yellow, In the Forest, To
My Wife, T. L. L., Désespoir, Pan,
Ravenna, The Sphinx, The Ballad of Reading
Gaol. POEMS IN PROSE: The Artist, The Doer of Good,
The Disciple, The Master, The House of
Judgement, The Teacher of Wisdom. Poems in Prose.
The Artist; The Doer of Good; The Disciple;
The Master; The House of Judgement; The Teacher
of Wisdom. Essays and Letters. De Profundis;
Four Letters from Reading Prison; Two Letters
to the Daily Chronicle. INTENTIONS - The Decay
of Lying; Pen, Pencil and Poison; The Critic
as Artist; The Truth of Masks. The Soul of Man
Under Socialism; The Rise of Historical Criticism;
The Portrait of Mr. W. H.; Phrases and Philosophies
for the Use of the Young. Chronological Table.
The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde
[Variorum Edition; Oxford English Texts ser.], gen. ed. Russel Jackson
& Ian Small [later Ian Small solo], 4 vols. (Oxford University
Press 2000- ). CONTENTS: Vol 1: Poems and Poems in Prose,
ed. Bobby Fong & Karl Feckson (OUP 2001), xxxii, 333pp.; Vol.
2: De profundis; Epistola: in carcere et vinculis,
ed. Ian Small (2010), 345pp.; Vol. 3: The Picture of Dorian
Gray, ed. Joseph Bristow (OUP 2005), lxxvii, 465pp. [incls.
the 1890 and 1891 texts]; Vol. 4: Criticism, ed. Josephine
M. Guy (OUP 2007), xcviii, 604pp. [incls. Historical Criticism,
Intentions [&] The Soul of Man]; Vol. V:
Plays I - The Duchess of Padua, Salomé, Drama en
un Acte; Salome: Tragedy in One Act, ed. Joseph Donohue
& Ian Small (OUP 2013), 848pp.; Vol. VI - Journalism I, ed.
John Stokes, Mark Turner (OUP 2013), 532pp. [Also cited: Complete
Works of Oscar Wilde, Part I (OUP [July] 2013), 532pp; Part
II (OUP [Dec.] 2013), 532pp. £125 each].
Collected Works of
Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays including
De Profundis [Wordsworth Library Collection] (Ware:
Wordswortrh Edns. 1997, 2007), 954pp. [1098pp.]. CONTENTS: The Picture
of Dorian Gray; Lord Arthur Saviles crime; The Sphinx Without
a Secret; The Canterville Ghost; The Model Millionaire; The Portrait
of Mr W.H.; The Young King; The Birthday of the Infanta; The Fisherman
and His Soul; The Star-child; The Happy Prince; The Nightingale and
the Rose; The Selfish Giant; The Devoted Friend; The Remarkable Rocket;
Lady Windermeres Fan; A Woman of No Importance; An Ideal Husband;
The Importance of Being Earnest; Salomé; Poems; The Sphinx; The
Ballad of Reading Gaol; Ravenna; The Decay of Lying; Pen, Pencil and
Poison; The Critic as Artist; The Truth of Masks; The Soul of Man Under
Socialism; De Profundis.
H. Montgomery Hyde, intro.,
The Complete Plays (London: Methuen 1976, 1988), 606pp. [Introduction,
p.1-28]; incl. a chronology of Wildes life, vii-xi.
CONTENTS. Lady Windermeres fan; Ideal husband; Importance of being
earnest; Woman of no importance; Salome; Duchess of Padua; Vera or the
nihilists; Florentine tragedy; Sainte Courtisane. Note: All the plays
included were first published by Methuen in 1908 [ed. Robert Ross] but
this edition includes The Gribsby Scene in which Algernon
is served a writ for an unpaid hotel bill in the West End; copyright
Estate of Vyvyan Holland, with explanatory note by H. M. Hyde (1981).
The Gribsby Scene found its way to Germany and was published separately
there as Ernst Sein! in 1903. A copy was read by the drama critic
James Agate who was impressed enough to say that the fun in the
scene that Wilde deleted is better than any living playwright can do.
He was unable to find the original, however. The full manuscript had
been written in four quarto notebooks, of which the fourth was given
to the British Museum by Ross in 1909. The remaining three turned up
in a sale of property by the widow of Arthur Clifton, who had apparently
borrowed them from Ross, a business associate, and were sold to Mr.
George Arents, who bequeathed them among the Arents Collection in the
New York Public Library. The Gribsby scene was broadcast by BBC Home
Service, 27 Oct. 1954, and reprinted in The Listener (4 Nov.
1954). Its best-known line is Algernons, Well, I really
am not going to be imprisoned in the suburbs [Holloway] for having dined
in the West End. It is perfectly ridiculous.
[ top ]
Richard Ellmann, ed.,
Artist as Critic: The Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde (London:
WH Allen 1970), includes Tomb of Keats; Impressions
of America; Mr Whistlers 10 OClock; Relation
of Dress to Art; Dinners and Dishes; Half Hours
with the Worst Authors [Saintsbury]; To Read or Not to Read;
Portrait of Mr WH [1921]; Paters Last Volume;
Preface to Dorian Gray; Defence of Dorian
Gray [newspaper letter of 1890]; Soul of Man Under Socialism
[Fortnightly Review, XLIX [No. 290; Feb. 1891 pp.292-319]; Decay
of the Art of Lying, Pen Pencil and Poison; The
Critic as Artist; The Truth of Masks [orig. Shakespeare
and Stage Costume, all from Intentions; [Oscar Wilde in
the Witness Stand, 1895]; also reviews of Froude, Mahaffy [review of
Mahaffys Greek Life and Thought, From the Age of Alexander
to the Roman Conquest, in Pall Mall Gazette, 1887], Swinburne,
William Morris, Henley and Sharp. [See Ellmann, ed., Critical Writings
of Oscar Wilde (1987), where Wildes conversion to Catholicism
is averred by Ellmann at the close of the Preface.]
Isobel Murray, ed.,
The Writings of Oscar Wilde [The Oxford Authors] (OUP 1989),
xxii, 635pp. CONTENTS. Part 1 Fiction: Lord Arthur Saviles
Crime; The Happy Prince; The Devoted Friend;
The Picture of Dorian Gray [pp.47-214]. Part 2: Critical
dialogues: The Decay of Lying; The Critic as
Artist - Pt. 1; The Critic as Artist - Pt. 2. Part
3: Plays: Salome; Lady Windermeres Fan;
An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest.
Part 4: Poems: The Harlots House; The
Sphinx; The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Part 5 Poems
in prose: The Artist; The Disciple; The
House of Judgment. Part 6: Aphorisms: A Few Maxims
for the Instruction of the Over-Educated; Phrases and
Philosophies for the Use of the Young.
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Theatrical
Details
Chronology of first performances: Vera, or the Nihilists
(written 1880; produced Union Square Th., 20 August 1883); The Duchess
of Padua: A Tragedy of the XVI Century (written 1882-83,
produced Broadway Th., NY, 26 Jan. 1891, and later in trans. by Max
Meyerfeld, Berlin 1904; pub. as Die Herzogin von Padua, Berlin:
S. Fischer 1904); Lady Windermeres Fan (St. James Th.,
20 Feb. 1892); A Woman of No Importance (19 April Haymaket 1893)
[var. 13]; An Ideal Husband (Haymarket, 3 Jan. 1895) [see details];
The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People
(St James Th., 14 Feb. 1895) [see details];
Salomé, drame en une Acte (Paris, Theatre de lOeuvre,
11 Feb. 1896; London, New Stage Club, Bijou Th., 10 May 1905); A
Florentine Tragedy (Literary Theatre Society, 10 June 1906). [See
Peter Kavanagh, The Irish Theatre (1946).]
An Ideal Husband,
Premiered at Theatre Royal, Haymarket, 3rd January 1895; Sole Lessee,
Mr. Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Managers: Mr. Lewis Waller and Mr. H. H.
Morell. Dram. Personae [actors]: THE EARL OF CAVERSHAM: Mr. Alfred
Bishop;VISCOUNT GORING: Mr. Charles H. Hawtrey; SIR ROBERT CHILTERN:
Mr. Lewis Waller; VICOMTE DE NANJAC: Mr. Cosmo Stuart; MR. MONTFORD:
Mr. Harry Stanford; PHIPPS: Mr. C. H. Brookfield; MASON: Mr. H. Deane;
JAMES: Mr. Charles Meyrick; HAROLD: Mr. Goodhart; LADY CHILTERN: Miss
Julia Neilson; LADY MARKBY: Miss Fanny Brough; COUNTESS OF BASILDON:
Miss Vane Featherston; MRS. MARCHMONT: Miss Helen Forsyth. MISS MABEL
CHILTERN: Miss Maud Millet; MRS. CHEVELEY: Miss Florence West. Note
also film version, An Ideal Husband, directed by Alexander
Korda (1948), 96 mins.
The Importance of Being
Earnest, Premiered at St. Jamess Theatre, London, 14th
February 1895; Lessee & Manager: Mr. George Alexander. Dram. Pers.
[actors]: JOHN WORTHING, J.P.: Mr. George Alexander; ALGERNON MONCRIEFF:
Mr. Allen Aynesworth; REV. CANON CHASUBLE, D.D.: Mr. H. H. Vincent;
MERRIMAN: Mr. Frank Dyall; LANE: Mr. F. Kinsey Peile; LADY BRACKNELL:
Miss Rose Leclercq; Hon. GWENDOLEN FAIRFAX: Miss Irene Vanbrugh; CECILY
CARDEW: Miss Evelyn Millard; MISS PRISM: Mrs. George Canninge.
[ top ]
A Little Gallery
of Wilde
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Wilde in 1883; cartoons by Max Beerbohm |
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Constance Wilde (centre - with Cyil) |
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Oscar Wilde & Bosie Douglas in 1897 |
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1, Merrion Sq. |
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Title Street |
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Reading Gaol |
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Père Lachaise (Jacob Epstein) |
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Homes of Oscar Wilde |
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