An Electronic Journal for the Exchange of Information

on Current Research, Publications and Productions

Concerning

Oscar Wilde and His Worlds

Issue no 48 : January / February 2009

oscholars@gmail.com

EDITORIAL PAGE

Navigating THE OSCHOLARS

Since November 2007 split this page has been split into two sections.  SECTION I now contains our Editorial, short pieces that we hope will interest readers, and innovations.  SECTION II is a Guide or site-map to what will be found on other pages of THE OSCHOLARS with explanatory notes and links to those pages (formerly to be found on the Editorial page).  Each section is prefaced by a Table of Contents with hyper links to the Contents themselves.  For Section I, please read on. 

For Section II, please click

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TABLE OF CONTENTS I: ITEMS ON THIS PAGE
I.  NEWS from the Editor	IV. OSCAR WILDE : THE POETIC LEGACY	XII.  VIDEO OF THE MONTH
II.  In the LIBRARY	V. ON THE CURRICULUM: TEACHING AND RESEARCHING WILDE, THE FIN-DE-SIÈCLE, ÆSTHETICISM AND DECADENCE	XIII.  WEB FOOT NOTES
III.  NEWS, NOTES & QUERIES	VI.  THE CRITIC AS CRITIC: Reviews	XIV.  OGRAPHIES
1. Identifying a Quotation	VII. DANDIES, DRESS AND FASHION	XV. MAD, SCARLET MUSIC
2. Notes Towards an Iconography of Oscar Wilde.	VIII. OSCAR WILDE AND THE KINEMATOGRAPH	XVI.  NEVER SPEAKING DISRESPECTFULLY: THE OSCAR WILDE SOCIETIES
3. Maurice A’Court Tucker	IX. LETTER FROM IRELAND	XVII. COLOUR SUPPLEMENT
4.   Broadcasts	X.  BEING TALKED ABOUT: CONFERENCES & CALLS FOR PAPERS	XVIII. OUR FAMILY OF JOURNALS
5. A Wilde Collection	XI.  OSCAR IN POPULAR CULTURE /WILDE AS UNPOPULAR CULTURE	XIX. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS II : GUIDE TO ALL PAGES Click  for the Guide itself, or GO to reach the pages directly
Awards		Special Issues		Publications		Strange Webs
Being Talking About		Going Wilde		The Rack and The Press		The Sibyl
Bibliographies		Guidance for submissions		Reading Groups		Teleny Revisited
Conferences, Lectures		Library		Rue des Beaux Arts		Upstage
Editorial, News & Notes [previous issue]		Mad, Scarlet Music		Shavings		Visions
Editorial Team		May I Say Nothing?		Society News		Wilde Societies
The Eighth Lamp		Moorings		Some Sell & Others Buy		Appendices

Nothing in THE OSCHOLARS © is copyright to the Journal save its name (although it may be to individual contributors) unless indicated by ©, and the usual etiquette of attribution will doubtless be observed.  Please feel free to download it, re-format it, print it, store it electronically whole or in part, copy and paste parts of it, and (of course) forward it to colleagues.

As usual, names emboldened in the text are those of subscribers to THE OSCHOLARS, who may be contacted through oscholars@gmail.com.  Text in blue can be clicked for navigation.

I. NEWS FROM THE EDITOR

Innovations

Launch of a new journal: many readers of THE OSCHOLARS will know that the Michael Field Society has been intending to produce an annual e-journal, The Michaelian. Problems arose over its website and we are delighted that we have been able to offer it a home and will be publishing The Michaelian at www.oscholars.com – an arrangement that we believe will be mutually beneficial. It will be a completely autonomous publication under its editor Sharon Bickle. The first issue is imminent.

A major innovation in our last issue was the introduction of a new section: our Colour Supplement. Some will remember a strip cartoon by Dan Pearce called ‘The Millennium Man’ that appeared on the Internet some years ago and subsequently disappeared again. This will be continued in each of our issues. Click the illustration to take up the tale:

Pictured: The original door of cell C.3.3, Reading Gaol, now part of the H.M. Prison Service Collection housed at the Galleries of Justice, Nottingham.

Our last issue also contained the second supplement dealing with late Victorian Gothic as a trope of decadence – MELMOTH, edited by Sondeep Kandola. We are pleased to announce that future appearances of MELMOTH will be on their own page, with a link from our hubpage.

Our special supplement on Teleny, was published in October 2008.  This was guest edited by Professor John McRae of the University of Nottingham, whose edition of Teleny was the first scholarly unexpurgated one to be published.  Teleny Revisited now becomes a major on-line resource and further articles will be considered for publication. Contact Professor McRae @; see Teleny Revisited .

New content appears on our website nearly every day, and we announce this in weekly reports on our ‘yahoo’ subsidiary. The number of our readers who have joined this has been growing, and it is increasingly our medium for making announcements in the place of mass mailings, which more and more fall foul of anti-spam traps either at the sending or receiving end. We do urge readers to sign up to this group. Our NOTICEBOARD also serves all our journals. Here we publish short term announcements of lectures, publications, papers and other items of interest submitted by readers.  This does not replace notice in any of the journals, but is intended to be of value between issues.  The ‘yahoo’ forum and NOTICEBOARD can be reached via their icons:

II. THE OSCHOLARS LIBRARY

From time to time, we have invited readers and others who have published articles on Wilde in anthologies or journals that are only readily accessible in university libraries (and not always then) to republish them (amended if desired) on THE OSCHOLARS website. We also republish older articles on Wilde from anthologies and festchriften, made obsolete by the march of scholarship, but which may still have some value in charting how he was viewed by earlier writers.

In September 2007, we began a year-long project of putting such articles on line at the rate of one a week, and have been very happy with the response. This systematic project has now come to an end, but we will continue to put articles up on an ad hoc basis. These appear in our section called LIBRARY.  Its logo, which can be clicked for access, is

This will bring you to a Table of Contents, arranged thematically, from which you can link to each article.  A subsection, IN OTHER BOOKCASES, is similarly arranged but gives links to articles that appear elsewhere on the internet.

We also link to French language articles similarly republished in rue des beaux-arts.

These articles are copyright to their authors, and thus usual rules for citation and against further publication apply.

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New postings are announced on our discussion forum

III. FREQUENTING THE SOCIETY OF THE AGED AND WELL-INFORMED: NEWS, NOTES, QUERIES.

Identifying a Quotation

Dr Katy Layton-Jones has contacted us to ask ‘about a Wilde quote that has appeared on Wikipedia and thereafter on a million web pages. We are suspicious about it as we can't find it anywhere else. It is: “Classicism is the subordination of the parts to the whole; decadence is the subordination of the whole to the parts”. A pretty standard decadent idea
but we've never seen the quote before. Do you know if this is in fact Wilde? If so, any idea where it comes from? Any help would be very gratefully received.’ Indeed, it would be useful to identify the source even if not by Wilde. Our forum is a suitable place to follow this up.

Notes Towards an Iconography of Oscar Wilde.

One of the least known portraits of Wilde, we think, is the drawing by Boldini, shown at the exhibition ‘Marcel Proust and His Time’, at the Wildenstein Gallery, 147 New Bond Street, London, in 1955. This was reproduced the Exhibition Catalogue, where it is plate XIII. The catalogue number, 176, is reticent, revealing only that it was lent by a Dr Robert Le Masle. More information on this is eagerly sought.

Maurice A’Court Tucker

The doctor who attended Wilde during his final illness has attracted no great attention beyond a cursory – yet surprising – mention that he was the British Embassy doctor, and therefore (one supposes), bon ton. We here note: De l’éclairages des Cavités de la Face par Dr. Maurice A'Court Tucker, Paris, G. Steinheil, 1894, 48pp, 3 figures.

Broadcasts

The Canterville Ghost was broadcast in three parts on the wireless station BBC 7 on 4th, 11th and 18th January. It was read by Alastair McGowan. We announced these at the time on our forum, and hope that we can extend these notifications about broadcasts with the help of readers.

A Wilde Collection

There is no universal handbook or vade mecum to the various Wilde Collections, and we have made a start here with an occasional article.  Sometimes where a collection’s contents are published in detail on-line we will simply give an URL; or we may be able to give more details ourselves.  We will then to be able to bring these together as a new Appendix. We would be very interested in publishing accounts of privately held collections, suppressing the owner’s name if that is preferred.

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IV. OSCAR WILDE : THE POETIC LEGACY

Raymond Friel was born in Greenock in 1963. After graduating from Glasgow University he moved to England and qualified as a teacher. His poems have been widely published in reviews and magazines. His collections include Bel-Air (1993), Seeing the River (1995), Renfrewshire in Old Photographs (2000) and A World Fit to Live In (2005). He co-edited the review Southfields and ran Southfields Press for a number of years. He lives with his wife and three sons in Somerset. His poem ‘Stations of the Heart’ comes from the collection of same name, and is here reproduced with the kind permission of the publishers, Salt Publishing (Salt Modern Poets, 2008), courtesy of Jen Hamilton-Emery. The poem is described as ‘providing one of the collection’s defining moments’.

Under a canopy of Roman pines
we found his grave: a “young English poet”.
Slumped on the bench with somnolent cats,

we breathed pine-scented, slurry with wine.
A tarnished lily leant on the gravestone,
a touch that Oscar Wilde would have loved
here in the “holiest place in Rome”
where he lay prostrate in utter devotion.

Thousands queued at the doorframes of judgment.
Heat shimmered on the swell of cobblestones.
Under the façade of eternal law,
haunted still by that improvised grace –
aching, lugubrious, borean –
I prayed for a heart fit for the scrutiny.

V. on the Curriculum : Teaching Wilde, Æstheticism and Decadence.

We are always anxious to publicise the teaching of Wilde at both second and third level, and welcome news of Wilde on curricula.  Similarly, news of the other subjects on whom we are publishing (Whistler, Shaw, Ruskin, George Moore and Vernon Lee) is also welcome. Andrew Eastham is developing a study of the teaching of Wilde, which we hope will be helpful to others who have Wilde on their courses; in tandem Tiffany Perala is looking at undergraduate response. Andrew Eastham presented his introductory declaration in our July/August issue . To participate in this, contact THE OSCHOLARS at oscholars@gmail.com or Andrew Eastham at @.

Programs & Initiatives – Moments of Change – 2008-09: The Turn of the 20th Century (1889-1914). This is a course at Penn State University. The programme is published at http://iah.psu.edu/assets/documents/MoC%2008-09%20Calendar.pdf. The course co-ordinator is Martina Kolb, Assistant Professor of German and Comparative Literature.

Mark Bennett (University of Glamorgan) writes: ‘As part of my MA's taught component I did actually look at some rather interesting 'sociological' material on a module convened by Andrew Smith. Examining the broader cultural presence of Gothic texts and narratives in a wide range of discourses: the obvious fictional texts (Jekyll and Hyde, Dracula, The Great God Pan, Dorian Gray, etc), cultural commentary and criticism by journalists and other writers (Stead, Mayhew, et al) and even a few interesting case studies, the Whitechapel murders, the case of Joseph Merrick and, interestingly enough, Oscar Wilde's three trials, upon which I actually ended up writing an essay. The general remit was geared towards the Gothic (unsurprisingly for a Gothic Studies MA) but the module was broadly concerned with discourses of masculinity and associated social 'scripts'; their threatened / undermined status etc... was interesting stuff and really opened my eyes to the range of material worthy of study during the period.’

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VI. THE CRITIC AS CRITIC

This issue’s review section contains reviews by Rainer Kohlmayer on Florina Tufescu on Wilde’s plagiarism, D.C. Rose on Wilde’s Women of Homer, Mary Warner Blanchard on David Weir on Decadent Culture in the United States, Anya Clayworth on Anne Humpherys and Louis James on G.W.M. Reynolds, John S. Partington on Graham Johnson on Social Democratic Politics in Britain and Barbara Wright on Eric Karpeles on Proust.

These can be seen by clicking .

Last issue’s review section contained reviews by Gert Buelens on Michèle Mendelssohn on Henry James and Oscar Wilde; Gwen Orel on The Selfish Giant and An Ideal Husband in New York; Leonée Ormond on Molly-Whittington-Egan on Frank Miles and Oscar Wilde; Linda Dryden on W.E. Henley and Robert Louis Stevenson; John McRae on Hirschfeld and Roellig on Homosexuals in Berlin; Laurence Talairach-Vielmas on John Glendening on The Evolutionary Imagination; Richard Toye on John Partington on H.G. Wells.

These can be seen by clicking .

Clicking    will take you to a Table of Contents for all our reviews, which we are currently updating.  We welcome offers to review from readers.

VII. DANDIES, DRESS AND FASHION

Flashes of Lavender:

Finding Primary and Secondary Sources for Wearers of Victorian Anti-fashion.

Elizabeth McCollum

Fashion Editor for THE OSCHOLARS

Victorian fashion is a strange thing: one either hates it or loves it. In fact, the modern day woman’s reaction to Victorian fashion is even more complex than that. Many women look at a fashionable Victorian gown and see only the tightly restricted waist, the cumbersome skirts and petticoats, the unmanageable crinoline or bustle. This leads them to reject it out of hand as something they would never wear, and thus not worth even thinking about. Others look at all that restriction and encumbrance and can’t wait to wear it themselves, working to lovingly recreate every detail of the look, from the elaborately coifed hair down to the toes of the buttoned shoes.

Then there are the reactions that come in between, which skew towards one extreme and the other in different ways. There are those who desire the corset to embrace them too tightly, taking delight in the enforced breathlessness and restriction, while leaving the other encumbrances of Victorian fashion aside. There are those (like your intrepid author) who take pleasure in the aesthetics of the fashion, occasionally attempt to wear a corset, but really prefer a lovely loose artistic gown if dressing for a Victorian gathering.

To some extent, these reactions reflect those of the Victorian women of the upper middle and upper classes towards fashion and reform dress, though it is not always easy to find those reactions in contemporary documents. Unless the woman was a ‘professional beauty’ (the Victorian equivalent of a model/spokesperson) or a reformer or a member of the Bohemian set, there might be very few real details about her garments in any of her letters or diaries. She had this dress made or that dress made, her child tore the lace on her one good evening gown: these sorts of things are sprinkled through her writings, but how she felt about putting on a corset every day, what she thought about the way she was dressed, were few and far between. Scholars of fashion scour these documents carefully and pull out any references they can find, and try to piece together as much as they can about the social history of costume, but it is slow going.

Every once in a while, though, a diary or a memoir is unearthed which is a treasure trove of fashion, or in this case, ‘anti’ fashion. Just such a memoir is that of Mrs. Alice Comyns-Carr, costume and dress designer, dear friend of Ellen Terry, and a prominent member of the Bohemian elite. Alice knew everyone in the artistic and theatrical circles, as well as those in the high society circles such as the Marlborough House set. In her delightful ‘Reminiscences’, Alice cheerfully name-drops in chapter after chapter, discussing such disparate characters as the Prince of Wales and Edward Burne-Jones and James MacNeill Whistler and Henry Irving. Her husband, Mr. Joseph Comyns-Carr, was one of the founders of the Grosvenor Gallery, that Aesthetic alternative to the Royal Academy opened in the late 1870’s, to showcase Burne-Jones, Whistler, and other non-Academic painters. He also wrote and produced plays.

Alice and Joseph seem to have had a very loving and close relationship, pursuing their artistic and theatrical passions both together and separately. Alice designed costumes for Ellen Terry, including the famous Lady Macbeth costume, including a crocheted mesh robe studded with iridescent carapaces from real beetles, immortalized in the dramatic portrait by John Singer Sargent. Her memoir discusses the ideas for this and other of Miss Terry’s costumes, as well as other costumes that she designed.

But perhaps the most wonderful thing about her memoir is that she discusses her reasons, albeit briefly, for deciding, as a young woman, to refrain from wearing restrictive corsets and bustles. This was in the early 1870’s, when the corset had just become even more of an encasement, extending from the middle of the bust down to the hips, reinforced by a spoon-shaped busk inserted down the front. The bustle rapidly gained in size, becoming more and more cumbersome. Being of an artistic frame of mind, Alice took to dressing in an artistic fashion, including her wedding dress, a grand brocaded gown, probably of a medieval design. Apparently it was so unusual that people showed up outside the church in Brussels, where they were married, just to see it:

My father, however, naturally wanted to ‘finish us off’ in the English Church, and I remember my shyness when I saw the uninvited crowd which had assembled there--I was told afterwards to see what a high-art wedding dress would be like!

Joe declared that they expected it to be scanty; if so they must have been disappointed that the folds of my soft brocade, fashioned after my artist sister-in-law's design and approved by my husband, were much more ample than was the mode of the day. (Mrs. Joseph Comyns-Carr, Stray Memories, p. 17.)

(There is no other real mention of her sister-in-law the artist in the book, and not much mention of her on the internet after a quick search. Tracking down designers and wearers of artistic fashion is like searching for a rare bird in the wild. Flashes of lavender and moss green and then they’re gone.)

Books about artistic dress are few and far between, but the most notable in recent years is the excellent Reforming Women’s Fashion, 1850-1920: Politics, Health and Art by Patricia A. Cunningham. A fairly comprehensive study of both rational dress reform and artistic dress, it provides many illustrations and gives a lot of the reasons as to why these movements existed and why they weren’t more widely successful. There is less information on the practicalities of how it was produced and who designed it, especially when it comes to the artistic dress. But it is in all other ways an incredibly useful reference book.

One of the many obstacles facing the scholar who is studying artistic and rational dress and the Aesthetic movement in particular, is the dismissive tone often taken by modern day historians of the period. Lionel Lambourne’s beautiful book The Aesthetic Movement spends almost as much time lampooning and ridiculing the movement’s aims as any issue of Punch ever did. Of course, any book about the movement must include mention of the derision and ridicule heaped on the movement and its followers, but Lambourne actually seems to share those opinions, and it makes it rather hard to really grasp the underlying philosophy when it is treated that cavalierly by the very author of a book that purports to explain it.

It is not an easy philosophy to grasp, even when treated more respectfully. The tenets are not anywhere strictly laid out, unless one counts Oscar Wilde’s lectures on ‘The House Beautiful’ or William Morris’ essays on the same theme. And so the costume historian wanting to get a better idea of the ideas behind artistic and rational dress is limited to the few articles here and there that one can find. Now this is not taking into account those resources to be found in certain libraries, both in Britain and in the States, which have holdings of magazine articles and letters and diaries that are there for anyone who can get to them.

But the pickings are still rather slim, even there.

Slim or no, there are still a couple of gems to be explored, that have not been mentioned yet. Firstly, the other main reference book that is worth mentioning is the excellent Health, Art and Reason: Dress Reformers of the Nineteenth Century by Stella Mary Newton, published in Britain in 1974. Ms. Newton’s book is beautifully written, with a real love and appreciation of the period and the aims of the dress reformers, as well as the artistic ideas behind it. Copiously illustrated in black and white, it is very informative about the actual styles, but she also does not spend much time talking about who exactly wore the dresses and why.

And finally, a book from the period, an instruction manual, mentioned by Ms. Newton in her book, is a little harder to find. Mrs. Haweis wrote The Art of Dress in 1879, at the very beginning of the peak of the Aesthetic movement’s hold on the popular conscience. Her purpose in writing it seems to have been to instruct young women in this new fashion. She discusses the proper colors, the beauty of materials; she discusses how art can influence one’s aesthetics, which can then be expressed in the way one dresses. It is a lovely book, striving for a certain lyricism to match the artistry that she is celebrating.

Perhaps that is what we need today, a book that celebrates the art of expressing oneself with clothing. We spend a lot of time these days, either torturing ourselves for beauty or going in the opposite extreme and not caring at all, as long as we have some sort of covering that serves our level of modesty. The art of dressing is harder to sell these days, as we want fast and easy ways of satisfying our wants. But there are a few proponents out there, most notably the blogger called the Sartorialist, aka Scott Schuman, who every day celebrates the artistic expressions of people on the streets of New York, Paris, Milan and any other city he happens to find himself in. A nattily dressed business man shows up one day and the next day it’s an art student who is wearing an interesting scarf or combination of trousers, spats and high heels. His blog is a true paean to the art of self-expression through clothing. He is the modern equivalent of Mrs. Haweis, in a way, gently instructing by example.

So artistic dressing is not completely dead, and perhaps with perseverance, a modern movement towards more self-expression might succeed. And that includes wearing corsets, if that is what expresses one’s inner artistic soul.

VIII. OSCAR WILDE AND THE KINEMATOGRAPH

There does not yet seem to be a release date for Al Pacino’s long-awaited Salomaybe. Al Pahaps? The cast is as follows: Al Pacino, Serdar Kalsin (himself/Herod), Kevin Anderson (himself/Jokanaan), Jessica Chastain, Estelle Parson (Salomé), Roxanne Hart (Herodias), Philipp Rhys (the young Syrian), Jack Huston (Lord Alfred), Richard Cox (Robert Ross)…

There have been previews of Oliver Parker’s Dorian Gray, with Ben Barnes (Dorian), Colin Firth (Lord Harry), Rebecca Hall (Sibyl Vane), Ben Chaplin and Rachel Hurd.

A third Wilde film in the making is A Woman of No Importance directed by Bruce Beresford, with Sienna Miller, Sean Bean, Annette Bening.

Posters

After appearing here, these are posted on their own page, called POSTERWALL, gradually building up a gallery that will make the images more accessible than by searching the Internet.  It was updated in December 2008, and can be found by clicking the icon. This month’s posters were found for us by Danielle Guérin. 

The left hand image is not a poster but a French DVD cover of the British Dorian Gray film Dorian, directed by Allan Goldstein (2001). It was called Pact with the Devil in the USA and, embracingly, Dorian - Pakt mit dem Teufel  in Germany.

IX. LETTERS FROM OUR EDITORS

LETTER FROM GERMANY

Lucia Krämer

21st January 2009

Although I cheerfully announced at the end of my last “Letter from Germany” in August that I would send you my next piece in autumn, this has turned out to be too optimistic a plan. My move from Regensburg to Hanover proved to be more nerve- and time consuming than I had expected, and it has taken me some months to adjust. Today’s letter, therefore, will cover a longer stretch of time than I had envisioned, namely the six months from August 2008 to January 2009. Since this time period roughly constitutes the first half of the theatrical season of 2008/09, however, it seems a natural choice for an overview. Like my last letter, this one will contain a mixture of data on new publications and theatrical productions, with some explanations and a contextualisation of the data within the German context.

Books/Audiobooks:

As usual, the focus of the German reception of British fin-de-siècle literature and culture in the past six months has been on Oscar Wilde. The outstanding Wilde event on the German book market was the new German translation of Wilde’s fairy-tales by Hans-Christian Oeser (Die Märchen, trans. Hans-Christian Oeser, Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 2008). The book, which was published in October, contains new versions of all the stories from A House of Pomegranates and The Happy Prince and brilliantly complements the older translations by Greve and Blei and by Lachmann and Landauer, which have so far dominated the German book market, and which also saw new editions in August 2008:

Wilde, Oscar. Die Erzählungen und Märchen. Trans. Felix Paul Greve, Franz Blei. Ill. Heinrich Vogeler. Frankfurt aM: Insel, 2008.

Wilde, Oscar. Ein Granatapfelhaus / Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray. Trans. Hedwig Lachmann, Gustav Landauer. Wiesbaden: Marixverlag, 2008.

While the latter book combines the stories from A House of Pomegranates with The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde’s novel was also published individually by the publishers Fischer (Frankfurt aM) and, as an audiobook, by Maritim Verlagsgruppe Hermann.

Grin Verlag continues its publication of students’ papers on topics relating to Wilde and has now printed a book on the dandy figure in Wilde and F.S. Fitzgerald:

Schönwald, Hans-Joachim. Die schwere Last der Lebenskunst – Der tragische Dandy bei Oscar Wilde und Francis Scott Fitzgerald: Examensarbeit. [The Heavy Burden of the Art of Living – The Tragic Dandy in the Works of Oscar Wilde and Francis Scott Fitzgerald]. Munich: Grin, 2008.

More substantial, at least quantitatively, at 628 pages, is a thesis by Sandra Walz on the reception of the Salome myth in the fin de siècle (Tänzerin um das Haupt, Munich: Martin Meidenbauer, 2008). Walz focuses on the German reception of the Salome story, although she also engages with Wilde, Flaubert and Mallarmé.

In contrast to Walz’ text, a new audio CD entitled Über Oscar Wilde: Eine psychoanalytische Betrachtung is entirely devoted to Wilde. The CD, which contains the recording of a lecture delivered by Simone Reissner in Stuttgart on 30 November 2008, provides a strictly psycho-analytic interpretation of Oscar Wilde’s person. An earlier, printed version of the paper, is available in System ubw – Zeitschrift für klassiche Psychoanalyse 25:1 (Sept 2007).

Apart from Wilde, the only other authors of the British fin de siècle who left a mark on the German book market with new publications in the past months are Stevenson and Shaw: Stevenson’s Treasure Island was published in a new Insel edition, whereas Shaw is one of several authors featuring in a thesis on the literary theme of women created by men:

Frane, Susanne. Frauen aus Männerhand: Ein Paradigma in der englischen und amerikanischen Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. [Women Made by Men: A Paradigm in British and American Literature of the 19th and 20th Centuries]. Trier: WVT, 2008.

Oeser’s new translation of Wilde’s fairytales must surely be considered as the highlight of the Wilde-related publications of the past six months, yet two more books dealing with important figures of the fin de siècle merit particular attention because they provide the first complete German translations of several interesting texts. The first is a book on Marcel Schwob by Gernot Krämer (no relation):

Krämer, Gernot. Marcel Schwob: Ein biographischer Essay. Mit Briefen von Robert Louis Stevenson, André Gide, Jules Renard, Paul Claudel, Stéphane Mallarmé, Colette und Marcel Schwob. Berlin: Elfenbein, 2008.

The main text of the book, a biographical essay by Krämer, is followed by an appendix containing an essay by Schwob about Robert Louis Stevenson, Schwob letters from and to other authors and Schwob’s wife, as well as stories by Schwob which did not make it into his publications. All these texts are here published in German for the first time.

The second book deserving special mention is a new publication with texts on and by Joris-Karl Huysmans. It combines the first complete German translation of Huysmans’ essay on the Belgian artist Félicien Rops with an essay by the translator, Peter Priskil, contextualising Huysmans and Rops in the culture of the fin de siècle:

Huysmans, Joris K. Jenseits des Bösen: Das erotische Werk von Félicien Rops/ Peter Priskil. Joris-Karl Huysmans – Avantgardist und schräger Heiliger. Freiburg: Ahriman-Verlag, 2008.

Theatre:

After Wilde’s relatively strong presence in German theatres during the theatrical season of 2007/08, the new season has so far continued this trend. The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband have each seen one new production so far. They exemplify two widespread approaches to Wilde in German theatre today. Earnest, the most popular Wilde play in Germany, has been put on in Eisleben, to much popular acclaim in a conventionally historicising production that interprets the play as a burlesque. In contrast, the production of An Ideal Husband at the Hans-Otto-Theater in Potsdam is shaped by a directorial concept aimed at alienating the widespread German preconception of Wilde as a writer of boulevard comedies. Thus the setting of the play is a lavatory, and the characters are dressed in 1960s costumes. According to the critic of the Märkische Allgemeine, the combination of this production design with Wilde’s brilliantly intellectual, yet often heartless aphorisms, and with a directorial concept presenting the characters first and foremost as types, emphasises the emptiness lurking behind the social life presented on stage. Here are the details of the two productions:

Bunbury oder Ernst sein ist alles

Eisleben, Landesbühne. Opened 4th October 2008

Directed by Ulrich Fischer; Set and Costumes by Christa Beland

Cast:

John Worthing

Stefan Liebermann

Algernon Moncrieff

Florian Wegner

Reverend Kanonikus Chasuble

Ralph Richter

Merriman

Alexander Abramyan

Lane

Lutz Potthoff

Lady Bracknell

Cornelia Jahr

Wohlgeboren Gwendolen Fairfax

Katja Preuß

Cecily Cardew

Friederike Butzengeiger

Miss Prism

Franziska Kleinert

Der ideale Gatte, Trans. Hans Wollschläger

Hans-Otto-Theater, Potsdam. Opened 16th January 2009

Directed by Tobias Rott; Set Design by Vinzenz Gertler; Costumes by Antje Sternberg

Cast:

Robert Chiltern

Moritz Führmann

Lord Goring

Uwe Eric Laufenberg

Lady Chiltern

Nicoline Schubert

Mrs Cheveley

Anne Lebinsky

Also with Rita Feldmeier, Caroline Lux, Ulla Schlegelberger, Sabine Scholze, Helmut G. Fritzsch, Roland Kuchenbuch, Philipp Weggler

Although Wilde continues strong on German stages, there is a major difference between this and the last theatrical season concerning the works that directors have chosen for production. In contrast to last season’s concentration on Wilde’s last two society comedies, and despite the new shows of these plays in Eisleben and Potsdam, most of the theatrical productions in this season have so far been adaptations from Wilde’s narrative works. Thus the theatre in Baden Baden put on a stage adaptation of Wilde’s Dorian Gray by John von Düffel, while The Canterville Ghost has been produced in three different versions in Weißenburg (as a musical), Cologne (as a one-man show) and Bremen.

Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray; Stage adaptation by John von Düffel

Theater Baden-Baden. Opened 12 December 2008

Directed by Maria-Elena Hackbarth; Set Design by Britta Langanke; Costumes by Claudia Jung

Cast:

Sonia Hausséguy, Nadine Kettler, Matthias Kress, Stefan Roschy, Max Ruhbaum, Falk Schuster

Das Gespenst von Canterville; Musical for children by Rainer Lewandowski adapted from Oscar Wilde

Bergwaldtheater, Weißenburg. Opened 3rd August 2008

Direction and Musical Direction by Tankred Schleinschock; Stage Design by Martin Lange; Costumes by Maud Herrlein

Cast:

Mr. Hiram B. Otis

Tobias Teschner

Mrs. Lucretia Otis

Gerrit Pleuger

Virginia Otis

Denise Elsen

Washington Otis

Alexander Leder

Mrs. Mary Umney

Andrea Walter

Lord Edward de Canterville / Sir Simon de Canterville

Stefan Leonard

Further dates: 1st February 2009 (Bürgerhaus Bergischer Löwe GmbH / Bergisch Gladbach), 8th February (Teo-Otto-Theater / Remscheid), 17th March (Theater am Wall - Dachtheater / Warendorf), 31st March 2009 (Kurhaus Bad Hamm / Hamm (Westf.))

Das Gespenst von Canterville; Adapted from Oscar Wilde by Joachim Berger

Freies Werkstatt Theater, Cologne. Opened 29th August 2008

Directed by Stefan Karthaus

Cast:

Joachim Berger

Das Gespenst von Canterville

Theater am Goetheplatz, Bremen. Opened 9th November 2008

Directed by Dirk Böhling; Set Design by Monika Gora;  Costumes by Bente Matthiessen; Music by Alexander Seemann

Cast:

Sir Simon, Gespenst

Martin Baum

Mr. Otis

Fred Apke

Mrs. Otis

Gabriele Möller-Lukasz

Viginia

Berit Möller

Tom

Jan Byl

Jerry

Timo Lampka

Oscar

Sebastian Dominik

Eleonore von Canterville

Antina Behrens

Musicians: Bente Matthiessen, Jens Piezunka

As usual, Wilde was most strongly present on German stages through Strauss’ Salome. Since my last letter, there have been no less than four new productions of this opera in Germany, alongside repertory performances of the piece for example in Munich, Cottbus and Berlin.

1. Salome

Staatstheater Kassel. Opened 6th September 2008

Musical Direction: Patrik Ringborg; Direction: Gabriele Rech; Stage Design: Dieter Richter; Costumes: Susanne Hubrich; Choreography: Lillian Stillwell

Udo Holdorf

Herodes

Dagmar Peckova / Lona Culmer-Schellbach

Herodias

Yamina Maamar

Salome

Stefan Adam

Jochanaan

Johannes An

Narraboth

Inna Kalinina

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2. Salome

Theater Pforzheim. Opened 13th September 2008

Musical Direction: Markus Huber; Direction: Wolf Widder; Set and Costumes: Sibylle Schmalbrock; Choreography: James Sutherland

Matthias Grätzel

Herodes

Dorothea Geipel

Herodias

Mary Anne Kruger

Salome

Joachim Fuchs

Jochanaan

Lemuel Cuento

Narraboth

Marie-Kristin Schäfer

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3. Salome

Theater am Goetheplatz, Bremen. Opened 14th September 2008

Musical Direction: Markus Poschner, Daniel Montané (01.10. / 17.10.); Direction: Susanne Kristin Gauchel, Christian Ludwig Attersee; Set and Costumes: Christian Ludwig Attersee; Choreography: Jaqueline Davenport

Mihai Zamfir, Patrick Jones

Herodes

Nadja Stefanoff, Fredrika Brillembourg

Herodias

Kelly Cae Hogan

Salome

Juan Orozco, Jochen Kupfer

Jochanaan

Jared Rogers

Narraboth

Karin Neubauer, Naja Stefanoff

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4. Salome

Theater Aachen. Opened 19th October 2008

Musical Direction: Marcus R. Bosch; Direction: Reinhild Hoffmann; Set and Costumes: Dieter Hacker

Hubert Delamboye

Herodes

Sanja Anastasia

Herodias

Luidmila Slepneva

Salome

Bastiaan Everink

Jochanaan

Luis Kim

Narraboth

Mélanie Forgeron

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By far the most widely reviewed of these productions was that of the Theater am Goetheplatz in Bremen, thanks to its production design by the Austrian painter Christian Ludwig Attersee, who also co-directed the play with Susanne Kristin Gauchel. Bernhard Doppler from Deutschlandradio Kultur, for example, criticised that the production relegated Strauss’ opera to a place where it was not much more than an extension of a vernissage. For not only was the entire stage production dominated by the visual concept created by Attersee, but the audience also had to spend the first twenty minutes of the performance walking around the theatre foyer where Attersee had exhibited 70 works relating to his work on the production. These came complete with price tags and were for sale.

A look beyond Wilde at other fin-de-siècle authors on German stages leads us onto the continent, since there were no new productions of any plays by other British writers. Instead, the German theatre scene continues its love affair with the great Scandinavians of the period, most especially Ibsen, with 13 new productions of 8 of his plays (five of The Doll’s House alone)! The first half of the season moreover saw a new production of Strindberg’s Ein Traumspiel at the Deutsches Theater Berlin (dir. Barrie Kosky, opened 4th December) and four new productions of plays by Gerhart Hauptmann.

So far my report on the last months, which has, I hope, some usable and interesting information for readers of THE OSCHOLARS. All the best to you and all fin-de-siècle lovers out there in the spaces of the world wide web!

LETTER FROM IRELAND

Aoife Leahy

We draw readers’ attention to the forthcoming conference ‘Ireland and the fin-de-siècle’. See below.

In the last issue we mentioned that Dr Deaglán Ó Donghaile is embarking on a research trip to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, California in April 2009. He has been awarded a Clark Library Short Term Fellowship to carry out research on Oscar Wilde. Dr Ó Donghaile has kindly given me more information about his research plans and says he is very pleased to be mentioned on THE OSCHOLARS website.

The trip is intended to identify Wilde’s political interest in Fenianism and anarchism. While these issues are mentioned in Declan Kiberd’s Inventing Ireland and in Richard Ellmann’s Oscar Wilde, they are not the main focus of the texts. Since the bulk of Wilde’s papers and manuscripts are held at the Clark Library, Dr Ó Donghaile is hoping to unearth some new material or to bring critical attention to information that has been overlooked so far. He promises to update THE OSCHOLARS on his return from California.

Dr Ó Donghaile will give a paper on ‘The Voice of Dynamite: Anarchism and Late Nineteenth Century Popular Literature’ at the ‘Europe and Popular Literature’ symposium in IADT Dun Laoghaire on February 28th 2009. The conference organiser will allow and even encourage questions on Wilde! Contact aoife.leahy@ireland.com for information about the symposium.

The stained glass artist Peadar Lamb’s website includes an attractive reproduction of the glass window he created for The American College in honour of Oscar Wilde. The commemoration window was commissioned by The Oscar Wilde Society and shows ‘The Happy Prince’ in all his golden glory, before he persuades the little sparrow to give his riches away to the poor. See the window at http://www.peadarlamb.com/ss/ss_h.html.

Oscholars can visit a site created by ‘The Oscar Wilde Fan Club’ on http://www.oscarwildefanclub.com/home.asp. The site is linked to The Oscar Wilde Summer School, organised by school director Carmen Cullen. The home page offers the services of Dublin actor Patrick Walsh as a lecturer on themes and talks connected with Oscar Wilde. Patrick Walsh can be contacted on patrick@oscarwildefanclub.com.

I came across a caricature of a relaxed looking Oscar Wilde on an Irish-based blog, ‘Quarehawk.’ The artist comments on his drawing: ‘Came out looking a bit creepy, but I like it anyway.’ The caricature is accessible on http://quarehawk.com/2007/09/09/oscar-wilde-caricature/

X. BEING TALKED ABOUT: CONFERENCES & CALLS FOR PAPERS

Here we now only note Calls for Papers or articles specifically relating to Wilde or his immediate circles.  The more general list has its own page, updated every month; to reach it, please click .  We hope these Calls will attract Wildëans.

Ireland and the Fin De Siècle. Conference: Thursday 3rd and Friday 4th September 2009, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin: Call for Papers.

Proposals are invited for 15 minute papers on ‘Ireland and the Fin De Siècle’. Many key Irish writers and artists were involved in the 1890s avant garde (including Oscar Wilde, Harry Clarke, George Moore and Sarah Grand) but the neglect of the Irish dimension of this literature has persisted.  By foregrounding the Irish aspect of fin de siècle literary and cultural experimentation, this conference proposes to redress that imbalance and consider the following questions. Who were the key Irish writers and artists of the fin de siècle? What was the impact on mainstream Irish culture of these fin de siècle experiments in literature and culture? How did the Irish aspect of this work influence fin de siècle literature in Britain and Europe more generally? What were the contemporary connections between literature, theatre design and the visual arts? This will be a two-day event, with panels drawn from the following areas: The New Woman in Irish Writing: Wilde and Irish Decadence, George Moore and the Irish Fin De Siècle; Visual culture and Irish Decadence; genre fiction; Irish/European connections.

Please send abstracts of not more than 500 words to Dr Eibhear Walshe @ or Dr Derek Hand @  by 1st March 2009.

‘British Æstheticisms’ are the subject of a conference being organised by Bénédicte Coste and Catherine Delyfer at the University of Montpellier in October 2009: see www.esthetismes.com. We will publish the programme as soon as it is available. This offers a wonderful chance of a gathering of fin-de-siéclistes in the celebrated university town in the south of France.

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The Société Française d’Etudes Victoriennes et Edouardiennes (http://www.sfeve.paris4.sorbonne.fr/) is inviting contributions for issue number 72 (October 2010) of its journal Les Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens (http://www.cervec.org/) devoted to the Theatre of Oscar Wilde.

Oscar Wilde has become a legend: an outstanding and witty dandy who was a real success in society dinners, but also a man whose image is tainted by scandal and provocation. The recent publication of several biographies, among which Richard Ellmann’s is seen as a reference, as well as letters and the detailed account of his trial by his grandson Merlin Holland (A Life in Letters, 2003 and The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde, 2003), all seem to indicate a desire for historical truth to be eventually revealed in a world now freed from homophobia. But once more, the analyses shed light on a character, a man and the role he created for himself. They do not offer a thorough analysis of his work. Actually one of the numerous aphorisms which Oscar Wilde is famous for, according to which life imitates art, and which he developed in his dramatic monologue De Profundis must not overshadow the primary importance of his literary and artistic creation. This issue of the Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens devoted to Oscar Wilde’s theatre aims at a return to the stylistic analysis of his plays, which were too often dismissed as trivial and considered as light entertainment for the higher classes of Victorian society. We will try to show how rich and creative his writing is, combining light comedy and poetic drama. Moreover, as a milestone and authoritative work of lasting significance, Wilde’s theatre is very often performed today: how can one explain that plays so deeply- rooted in the Victorian era, representing outdated social and moral values, are still arousing the interest of stage directors and gathering a faithful audience? We will thus study how stage directors adapt his plays to find a new public. As a playwright, but also as a stage director of his own public and private life and as a performer of a variety of roles, Oscar Wilde is above all a man of the theatre. This issue of the Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens will thus try to avoid a mere biographical point of view to put his theatrical creation itself on the front stage.

A CV and an abstract in English (no more than 300 words) should be sent by 30th March 2009 to Marianne Drugeon, special editor of this issue. Marianne.drugeon@univ-montp3.fr The article should follow the presentation of the M.L.A.Handbook.

Notes for contributors: Articles submitted for consideration. Length: 30 to 40,000 characters (6000 to 7000 words). Two hard-copies of the article should be sent along with the e-mail copy to Marianne Drugeon.

M.L.A. Style Sheet Specifications; Rich Text Format (RTF). Use footnotes, not endnotes. Illustrations are welcome but the author is responsible for obtaining all necessary copyright permissions before publication. The bibliography should come at the end of the article. For more details and to send your submission, please contact: Marianne.drugeon@univ-montp3.fr

Marianne Drugeon, MCF, Special Editor of the CVE, Université Montpellier 3, Route de Mende, 34199 Montpellier Cedex 5 FRANCE.

XI.  OSCAR IN POPULAR CULTURE / WILDE AS UNPOPULAR CULTURE

Alcohol taken in sufficient quantities (2):
This rather unprepossessing building is ‘Oscar Wilde’s Irish Pub’ in Grund, Luxembourg (reference kindly provided by Tine Englebert). Click the illustration for the website.

In the French coastal resort of Royan, a clothes boutique called ‘W Street’ has as its motto ‘Le seul moyen de se délivrer de la tentation c’est d’y ceder – Oscar Wilde’. This appears on their posters and trade cards.

XII. OSCAR WILDE: THE VIDEO

Our video this month is a repellent caricature of Wilde by somebody called Jonathan King: ‘Oscar: Wilde About Boys’.

We again draw readers’ attention to the videos in the Theatre Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. These can only be viewed in the Museum’s Reading Room, a restriction imposed as part of the recording conditions. To date the videos are The Importance Of Being Earnest, Old Vic Theatre, August 1995 directed by Terry Hands; The Importance Of Being Oscar by Michéal Mac Liammoir, Savoy Theatre, May 1997, directed by Patrick Garland with Simon Callow as Mac Liammoir as Wilde; and Lady Windermere’s Fan, Theatre Royal Haymarket, May 2002, directed by Peter Hall.

XIII. Web Foot Notes

A look at websites of possible interest.  Contributions welcome here as elsewhere. 

All the material that we had thus far published in the ‘Web Foot Notes’ was brought together in June 2003 in one list called ‘Trafficking for Strange Webs’.  New websites continue to be reviewed here, after which they are filed on the Trafficking for Strange Webs page, which was last updated in May 2008: a new update is in the course of preparation. A Table of Contents has been added for ease of access. ‘Trafficking for Strange Webs’ surveys 48 websites devoted to Oscar Wilde. The Société Oscar Wilde is also publishing on its webpages two lists (‘Liens’ and ‘Liaisons’) of recommendations.  To see ‘Liens’, click here. To see ‘Liaisons’, click here.

To see ‘Trafficking for Strange Webs’, click  .

Xenia Schmidt is an artist with a website at http://www.xeniaschmidt.com/. Ten of the twenty four of her works that she shows are inspired by Wilde. We will be returning to Xenia Schmidt’s work in more detail in future.

Malcolm Shifrin has published his annual hyperlinked signpost pointing to some of the items which have been added to the Victorian Turkish Bath website over the past year. Items noted include, for example:

· a short article on The City Turkish Bath, 5 South Street, Finsbury Square, London, with a table showing the reason why more than two hundred bathers visited these baths;

· a completely new article on the two Turkish baths at Glenbrook, Co. Cork, Ireland—those at The Victoria Baths and Family Hotel, and those at Dr Curtin's Hydropathic Establishment. This replaces an earlier, shorter, and somewhat tentative one on the baths at the hotel only, and includes images from the National Library of Ireland and the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork;

· a table of the sixteen Turkish baths which have closed since 1990, leaving only eighteen Victorian-style Turkish baths still open in England and Scotland—of which only two were built during Victoria's reign;

· and delightful images in colour, such as those of a hot room at the  new club-house of the Boston Athletic Association, 1889 and the interior of the refurbished cooling-room and plunge pool in the Bligh Street Turkish Baths, Sydney, Australia, 1884.

XIV. OGRAPHIES

We continue to expand our sections of BIBLIOGRAPHIES, DISCOGRAPHIES and SCENOGRAPHIES and this is now a major component of our work. Click the appropriate icons. Updates are announced regularly on our forum.

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NEWS FROM THE Royal Historical Society Bibliography, Irish History Online AND London's Past Online

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The latest update is now available online at RHS Bibliography, Irish History Online and London's Past Online.

New records: In response to comments from users, we have adopted a new policy towards releasing new records from the RHS database. We are including records as soon as we have confirmed that a book or article has been published and relates to British or Irish history. These records carry provisional indexing which has not yet been checked by our team of academic section editors (such records can be identified by a note: 'Record not yet reviewed by RHS section editor'). As a result, this update is much larger than previous ones, and includes nearly 10,900 new records; just over 3000 of these cover publications of 2008. We would be very pleased to know whether users find this earlier release of provisionally indexed records helpful.  You can contact us by using our feedback form, or by sending an e-mail to simon.baker@sas.ac.uk.

Nearly 1127 of the new records relate to Irish history. These include virtually all of the remaining records from Writings on Irish History for 2005, provided by Irish History Online, of which the first part was included in our previous release. The number of records in the database relating to Irish history now totals over 66,000; all these records are accessible using the Irish material only option on the RHS search menu, or through the Irish History Online search menu.

Although the London's Past Online project is no longer itself creating new records, new material on London history continues to be made available by the Royal Historical Society and (where titles concern the Irish in London) by Irish History Online. In addition, this update includes information on newly completed theses relating to London history supplied by the Centre for Metropolitan History. 687 of the new records in this update relate to London and are available using the London material only option on the RHS search menu, or through the London's Past Online search menu.

The complete database, including titles from Irish History Online and London's Past Online, now contains over 456,000 records. You can browse all the latest additions, including those from Irish History Online and London's Past Online, by broad period/country categories (based on the sections previously used for the printed RHS Annual Bibliography) by going to our browse page.

New download in EndNote format: On the detailed record display, you can now choose to download records in EndNote format, and save the file for import into the EndNote bibliographical software package. More information is available from our help pages.

Links to online text and services: We have extended our links to the full text journal articles freely available in the online library of the Archaeology Data Service by including links from our records for articles in Berkshire Archaeological Journal, 35-70 (1931-80). We continue to update our links to other online resources, including the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford Scholarship Online and British History Online), as new material appears there.

Other news: As in all updates, the indexing of many records initially published in the CD-ROM version of the RHS Bibliography has been improved. We plan to carry out the next data upgrade in spring 2009. We welcome comments, suggestions and feedback at http://www.rhs.ac.uk/bibl/docs/feedback.html , or by e-mail to simon.baker@sas.ac.uk

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Troy J. Bassett (Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne) has announced that At the Circulating Library: A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837-1901 (www.victorianresearch.org/atcl) now encompasses all the three-volume novels written during the period: over 5000 titles written by some 1600 authors and published by 130 publishers appearing in The English Catalogue of Books and other sources. ATCL can be browsed by author, title, publisher, or year. In addition, users can do keyword searches on author names and book titles. The next phase of the project includes three goals: first, to provide basic biographical information about the authors and publishers not listed in the standard reference works like Sutherland's The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction and the DNB; second, to add a subject/genre index (i.e., the sensation novel); and third, to include serialization information. THE OSCHOLARS hopes that the work of Letitia Prism may find a place…

We also refer readers to the publication A Year’s Work in English Studies, Volume 87, Number 1, 2008.

XV. Mad, Scarlet Music

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Our regular feature concerning Wilde-related music covers productions, recordings and reviews of the Wilde operas, cantatas, orchestral suites, musical comedies and ballets, to which we add information about other musical works of Wilde’s period or derived from its literature. From Strauss’ Salome and Zemlinsky’s Florentine Tragedy to Oliver Rudland’s The Nightingale and the Rose and Elizabeth Esris’ and Sergio Cervetti’s Elegy for a Prince, we gather all the materials for a major study of Wilde’s impact on composers. Mad, Scarlet Music is edited by Tine Englebert. For the current edition, click

XVI. NEVER SPEAKING DISRESPECTFULLY: THE OSCAR WILDE SOCIETIES & ASSOCIATIONS

News of the Wilde Societies is published on their own page. We are very pleased that we now carry news of the Oscar Wilde Society of Japan. To reach the page, please click

XVII. THE OSCHOLARS COLOUR SUPPLEMENT

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Readers of our sister journal RUE DES BEAUX ARTS will be familiar with its long running strip cartoon on Oscar Wilde by Patrick Chambon. In the issue of November 2008 this was joined by a new strip by Dan Pearce, translated into French (as Oscar Wilde: La Resurrection) by Danielle Guérin. With this issue of THE OSCHOLARS we publish the second episode in English (as Oscar Wilde: The Second Coming).

Our plan is eventually to bring all three strips into one folder, where they can be read straight through as graphic novels.

· For a Bibliography of Wilde in graphic novel form compiled by Danielle Guérin, click here.

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XVIII. OUR FAMILY OF JOURNALS

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All our journals appear on our website www.oscholars.com. Each has a mailing list for alerts to new issues or special announcements. To be included on the list for any or all of them, contact oscholars@gmail.com.

The Eighth Lamp

The second issue of this journal of Ruskin studies has been published on our website, under the vigorous editorship of Anuradha Chatterjee (University of South Australia) and Carmen Casaliggi (University of Limerick). Dr Chatterjee has produced a splendid new issue, and issued a Call for Papers for the third. THE EIGHTH LAMP: Ruskin Studies To-day will shed much light in new places, and places Ruskin studies firmly in conjugation with Wilde studies.

Rue des Beaux Arts

The eighteenth issue of our French language journal under the dedicated editorship of Danielle Guérin is published this January. It continues to reflect and encourage Wilde studies in France and the Francophone countries.

Shavings, Moorings and The Sibyl

New issues of these journals devoted to George Bernard Shaw (co-edited by Barbara Pfeifer), George Moore (edited by Mark Llewellyn) and Vernon Lee (edited by Sophie Geoffroy) are published as material is accumulated. We recommend joining their mailing list for alerts. A new issue of The Sibyl has been completed and will be published on 13th February. In December the transfer was completed of all the early issues of Shavings from our former webpages at www.irishdiaspora.net to www.oscholars.com; a new issue should be up during February.

Visions and Nocturne

In the spring of 2008 we gathered together all the visual arts information that was scattered through different section of THE OSCHOLARS into a section called VISIONS. This was consolidated in the summer, and a new edition was published in the autumn. We are now calling for papers for a Spring issue. VISIONS is co-edited by Anne Anderson, Isa Bickman, Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch, Nicola Gauld and Sarah Turner. NOCTURNE, our journal devoted to Whistler and his circle, is now being incorporated into VISIONS.

The Latchkey

After various teething problems, the first issue of THE LATCHKEY, a journal devoted to reporting and creating scholarship on The New Woman, is now ready for publication. The co-editors are Jessica Cox, Petra Dierkes-Thrun, Sophie Geoffroy, Lisa Hager, Christine Huguet, and Kathleen Gledhill.

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XIX. Acknowledgments

THE OSCHOLARS website continues to be provided and constructed by Steven Halliwell of The Rivendale Press, a publishing house with a special interest in the fin-de-siècle.  Mr Halliwell joins Dr John Phelps of Goldsmiths College, University of London, and Mr Patrick O’Sullivan of the Irish Diaspora Net as one of the godfathers without whom THE OSCHOLARS could not have appeared on the web in any useful form.

Return to Table of Contents | Return to hub page | Return to THE OSCHOLARS home page

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