Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Oscar Wilde
-
Standard Name: Wilde, Oscar
Birth Name: Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
OW
's significance as poet, playwright, and writer of prose fiction, remained in eclipse for many years after his notorious trial and imprisonment in Reading Gaol
, events whose chilling impact on poetry and prose in England was not reversed until the modernists returned to the struggle for unfettered aesthetic expression. A leading proponent of art for art's sake in England, OW
was a follower of Walter Pater
, from whose work he borrows in lavish quantity, and, like Pater, he was much influenced by the French l'art pour l'art poets, notably Charles Baudelaire
and Théophile Gautier
.
Clements, Patricia. Baudelaire and the English Tradition. Princeton University Press, 1985.
140-83
More recently, his brilliant aesthetic essays have drawn serious attention as the basis for many critical propositions . . . which we like to attribute to more ponderous names.
Ellmann, Richard, editor. The Critic as Artist: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde. Random House, 1969.
x
His notoriety as a casualty of oppressive laws against the practice of homosexuality is also the subject of a good deal of recent critical comment.
"Oscar Wilde" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Oscar_Wilde_%281854-1900%29_1889%2C_May_23._Picture_by_W._and_D._Downey.jpg.
As well as a writer, EDA
was an editor, assistant to Henry Harland
on the avant-garde Yellow Book, published by John Lane
of the Bodley Head
. Sources agree on this, though she herself...
Performance of text
Julia Constance Fletcher
The Sketch reported that the opening was attended by Fletcher herself, who appeared on stage after the curtain fell to acknowledge the enthusiastic applause of the audience, and by other luminaries including Oscar
and Constance Wilde
politics
Julia Ward Howe
In 1882 Oscar Wilde
, making his lecture tour of the USA, spoke at the Boston Music Hall. While he was in Boston he made several visits to the Howe residence, and he also...
politics
Josephine Butler
Even after her retirement from an active public life, JB
continued to be interested in a number of international causes. She supported Home Rule in Ireland (two bills for which were defeated in 1886); she...
Author summary
Ada Leverson
AL
has been best remembered for her association with Oscar Wilde
. But her six novels have never disappeared from public view or critical appreciation, and today interest has also developed in her journalism: stories...
Author summary
Jane Francesca Lady Wilde
Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
, remains best known for her fierce Irish Nationalist poems published in the Nation under the pseudonym Speranza. She became known too for her translations of both poetry and fiction...
Author summary
Natalie Clifford Barney
Natalie Clifford Barney
, though American, is best known as a Paris salonnière. She specialized in memoirs and pensées, though she also produced poetry, drama, novels, essays, and dialogues. Writing primarily in French but also...
Publishing
Ella Hepworth Dixon
As a member of the Yellow Book circle, named for the illustrated quarterly largely initiated by Wilde
, EHD
naturally wrote for this journal as well. It too turned out to be less radical than...
Publishing
Charlotte Mew
The story was rejected by The Yellow Book in January 1895 as too long (although they had recently printed a longer story by Henry James
).
Stanford, Donald E., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 19. Gale Research, 1983.
309
Fitzgerald, Penelope. Charlotte Mew and Her Friends. Collins, 1984, p. 240 pp.
Chalon, Jean. Portrait of a Seductress: The World of Natalie Barney. Translator Barko, Carol, Crown, 1979.
51
Elliott, Bridget, and Jo-Ann Wallace. Women Artists and Writers: Modernist (im)positionings. Routledge, 1994.
31
Publishing
Jane Francesca Lady Wilde
Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
, contributed the poem Historic Women to The Woman's World, edited by her son Oscar
.
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 199. Gale Research, 1999.
199: 303
Publishing
Alice Meynell
AM
stopped publishing with John Lane
after Oscar Wilde
's conviction.
Schaffer, Talia. The Forgotten Female Aesthetes: Literary Culture in Late-Victorian England. University Press of Virginia , 2000.
172
Publishing
Amy Levy
AL
published articles in many periodicals, particularly the Cambridge Review (from 9 June 1880), Temple Bar (from the same year), the popular magazine London Society (from 1883), the Jewish Chronicle, the Star (from 3...
Publishing
Julia Constance Fletcher
The full title was The Truth about Clement Ker: being an account of some curious circumstances connected with the life and death of the late Sir Clement Ker, Bart., of Brae House, Peeblesshire; told by...
Publishing
Ada Leverson
AL
(who may or may not have been already acquainted with Oscar Wilde
) published in the humorous magazine PunchAn Afternoon Party, a parody of his Dorian Gray.
