An
Electronic Journal for the Exchange of Information
on Current
Research, Publications and Productions
concerning
Oscar Wilde and His Worlds
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Vol. IV |
No. 11 |
Is
Lou Tellegen as Dorian Gray
Vanity Fair cartoon, 10th September 1913
EDITORIAL PAGE
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Navigating THE OSCHOLARS |
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From
November 2007 we have split this page into two sections. SECTION I now contains
our Editorial, and short pieces that we hope will interest readers. 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 THE OSCHOLARS is
composed in Bookman Old Style, chiefly 10 point. You can adjust the
size by using the text size command in the View menu of your browser. |
Clicking clicking clicking The sunflower We do not usually publish e-mail addresses
in full but the sign @ will
bring up an e-mail form. |
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TABLE OF
CONTENTS SECTION I : ON THIS PAGE Click on any entry for direct access |
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I. NEWS from
the Editor; changes to our team; innovations on the website; our discussion
forum. |
5. Wilde on the Curriculum |
VII. OSCAR IN POPULAR
CULTURE |
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II. In the LIBRARY |
6. Work in Progress |
13. Archive
closures |
VIII.
VIDEO OF THE MONTH |
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III.
NEWS,
NOTES & QUERIES |
7. A Wilde Collection |
14. New on-line database |
IX. LILIES & SESAME |
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1. Pietro Psaier (2) |
8.
Oscar Wilde and Robert Buchanan |
15. Broadcasts |
X.
WEB FOOT NOTES |
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2.
Oscar Wilde goes to Sea |
9. Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain (2) |
IV. THE CRITIC AS
CRITIC: Reviews |
XI.
BIBLIOGRAPHIES |
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3.
Oscar Wilde : The Poetic Legacy |
10. Oscar Wilde and Katherine
Mansfield (2) |
V.
BEING TALKED ABOUT: Calls for papers |
XII.
NEVER SPEAKING DISRESPECTFULLY: THE OSCAR WILDE SOCIETIES |
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4.
Oscar Wilde and the Kinematograph |
11. Mr
Justice Wills |
VI.
THE OTHER OSCAR |
XIII. Acknowledgements |
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TABLE
OF CONTENTS of SECTION II : GUIDE TO ALL PAGES Click
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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. Underlined text in blue can be clicked for navigation through the
document or to other addresses.
I.
NEWS FROM THE EDITOR
1.
Innovations
In our last is
To see all our team click
Work continues on the reconstruction of the
website, with improvements in accessibility and design, so that it becomes a
fully-searchable and easily navigated resource. This involves less
scrolling and more clicking, enabling us decrease the length of pages.
Various pages have been split up, and new ones created. This is largely
the inspiration (and wholly the hard work) of our webmaster, Steven
Halliwell.
Shortly to be introduced will be a section devoted
to the New Woman, that important phenomenon of the fin-de-siècle. This
not only denotes our dedication to fin-de-siècle studies in general but is a
special salute to Lady Wilde, Constance Wilde, Dolly Wilde and Oscar’s own
interest in giving women a voice in the magazine he edited – without great
distinction, it must sadly be noted. Edited by Dr Tina O’Toole
with the assistance of Lisa Sheridan and Yvonne O’Keeffe, it will
begin as a section within this page, but following precedent will when ready
migrate to its own page, and then perhaps become a multi-page journal in its
own right on our site. Its provisional title is The Yellow Aster.
Our journal devoted to Vernon Lee (The Sibyl ), under the editorship of
Another special is
A further special is planned for 2009, on Oscar
Wilde’s stories for children. Initial expressions of interest in
contributing can be sent to oscholars@gmail.com.
Taking advantage of the possibilities of the
website, we have also introduced a page called NOTICEBOARD, serving all our
journals, where we will happily publish short term announcements of
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 is
Our new page called 
, launched in October 2007, is
now firmly established. Here we now gather the general theatre
information that was scattered through our different sections – click its
colophon to reach it. This is part of our reconstruction, allowing THE OSCHOLARS itself to focus more narrowly on
things Oscarian.
All this activity has meant that we have had to review
our publishing schedule. In future THE OSCHOLARS will be published in
February, April, June, August, October and December, alternating with rue des beaux
arts, which will be published in January, March, May, July,
September and November. Moorings will be published in December, April, and
August; The Sibyl in
January, May and September. Shavings will be published irregularly, as
material makes necessary.
Discussion and announcements forum / Letters to the Editor
We continue
to urge readers to sign up with our discussion group with Yahoo, which despite
its unattractive name and often unattractive material,
is familiar to most people, and easy to operate and govern. We have laid
down fairly strict guidelines for postings, and we hope that it will avoid
acquiring some of the useless baggage that is a characteristic of some of these
groups. Our model is
This will also serve to alert readers to new
material appearing on our website between is
II.
THE OSCHOLARS
LIBRARY
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From time to time, we invite 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 have recently been putting articles on-line at the rate of one a week, and
are very happy with the response that this has been meeting. We also intend
republishing 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. These appear in a section called LIBRARY.
Its logo, which can be clicked for access, is
This will bring you to a Table of Contents from
which you can link to each article. There are also links to French
language articles similarly republished in rue
des beaux-arts. Recently
posted to LIBRARY: ‘“The
Fiend That Smites with a Look”: the Monstrous/Menstruous Woman and the Danger
of the Gaze in Oscar Wilde's Salomé’ by Helen
Tookey ‘The
Soul of Man under Socialism’ by Alwyn
Edgar ‘Mikhail
Bulgakov's “The Master and Margarita” and Oscar Wilde's “Salomé”:
Motif-Patterns and Allusions’ by Katherina
Filips-Juswigg 'Gothic Surface, Gothic Depth: The Subject
of Secrecy in Stevenson and Wilde' by Judith
Halberstam 'Critical Fallibilism in Oscar Wilde: Karl
Popper anticipated?’ by Joachim Zelter 'Paterian aesthetics, pederasty, and Oscar
Wilde's fairy tales' by Naomi Wood 'White Symphonies with Red Spots: Colour
and the Representation of Women in Four Poems by Oscar Wilde' by Anja Mueller 'Oscar Wilde (1854-1900): Aesthetics and
Criticism' by Megan Becker-Leckrone These articles are copyright to their authors, and thus
usual rules for citation and against further publication apply. New
postings are announced on our discussion forum
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III.
FREQUENTING THE SOCIETY OF THE
AGED AND WELL-INFORMED: NEWS, NOTES, QUERIES.
«
Questions
are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are. »
1. Pietro Psaier (2)
Our frontispiece last month was an image of Wilde by Pietro Psaier (1836-2004); and
we reproduce a second image below. According to our limited researches,
Psaier was born in
Catarina Nirta (Goldsmiths College, University of London), who first drew our attention to Psaier, has been probing deeper and has received this letter from Matt Wrbican, Archivist of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
‘To date, Warhol's archives have revealed no information whatsoever about Pietro Psaier, which has always made me extremely skeptical that his alleged association with Warhol is genuine. Given your difficulties with research, perhaps his entire career is fiction, as well?’
These echoes of The Portrait
of Mr W.H. will resonate further in our pages.
2.
Oscar Wilde goes to Sea
As reported last month, Irish Ferries have introduced
the most luxurious ferry yet to be in their service, on their Rosslare – France
(
Scheduled sailings began on
Click on the picture for a ‘tour’ of the ship.
3.
Oscar Wilde : the
Poetic Legacy
This
month we reproduce a fairly well-known poem, ‘A Nightmare’ by G.K. Chesterton,
published in 1908 at the preface to The
Man who was Thursday. It remains as
good a blast of the counter-decadence as Kipling’s ‘The Mary Gloster’.
To Edmund Clerihew Bentley
A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing
went the weather,
Yea, a sick cloud upon the
soul when we were boys together.
Science announced nonentity and art admired
decay;
The world was old and ended: but you and I
were gay;
Round us in antic order their crippled vices
came—
Lust that had lost its
laughter, fear that had lost its shame.
Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit
our aimless gloom,
Men showed their own white feather as
proudly as a plume.
Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone
that stung;
The world was very old indeed when you and I
were young.
They twisted even decent sin to shapes not
to be named:
Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not
ashamed.
Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we
failed, not thus;
When that black Baal blocked the heavens he
had no hymns from us
Children we were—our forts of sand were even
as weak as eve,
High as they went we piled them up to break
that bitter sea.
Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and
absurd,
When all church bells were silent our cap
and beds were heard.
Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny
flags unfurled;
Some giants laboured in that cloud to lift
it from the world.
I find again the book we found, I feel the
hour that flings
Far out of fish‑shaped Paumanok some
cry of cleaner things;
And the Green Carnation withered, as in
forest fires that pass,
Roared in the wind of all the world ten
million leaves of grass;
Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings
in the rain—
Truth out of Tusitala spoke and pleasure out
of pain.
Yea, cool and clear and sudden as a bird
sings in the grey,
But we were young; we lived to see God break
their bitter charms.
God and the good Republic come
riding back in arms:
We have seen the City of
Blessed are they who did not see, but being
blind, believed.
This is a tale of those old fears, even of
those emptied hells,
And none but you shall understand the true
thing that it tells—
Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men
and yet crash,
Of what huge devils hid the stars, yet fell
at a pistol flash.
The doubts that were so plain to chase, so
dreadful to withstand—
Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who
shall understand?
The doubts that drove us through the night
as we two talked amain,
And day had broken on the streets e’er it
broke upon the brain.
Between us, by the peace of God, such truth
can now be told;
Yea, there is strength in striking root and
good in growing old.
We have found common things at last and
marriage and a creed,
And I may safely write it now, and you may
safely read.
4.
Oscar Wilde and the Kinematograph
We receive news that that Rupert Everett is again talking of making a film about Wilde’s last years; but details about this, and about Al Pacino’s film on (rather than of) Salome seem difficult to come by. The picture, not easy to make out, shows Pacino with a power point or slide representation of the picture of Wilde by Louis Le Brocquy.
Posters
This section, in which we are displaying film
posters, began in April 2003. 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. This can
be found by clicking on the icon
This month’s poster was found for us by
Lady Windermere’s Fan
(1925) American
B&W : Eight reels /
7815 feet
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Cast: Ronald Colman [Lord Darlington], May McAvoy
[Lady Windermere], Bert Lytell [Lord Windermere], Irene Rich [Mrs. Erlynne],
Edward Martindel [Lord Augustus], Carrie Daumery, Helen Dunbar, Belle Bennett,
Larry Steers, Wilson Benge, Mrs. Cowper-Cowper
Warner Brothers Pictures, Incorporated,
production; distributed by Warner Brothers Pictures, Incorporated. / Scenario
by Julian Josephson, from the play Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde. Art
direction by Harold Grieve. Costume design by Sophie
Wachner. Assistant directors George Hippard and Ernst
Laemmle. Electrical effects by H.W. Murphy. Cinematography by Charles J. Van Enger. Assistant
cameraman Willard Van Enger. Intertitles by Maude Fulton
and Eric Locke. Art titles by Victor Vance. /
Comedy.
Survival Status: Prints exist in the Museum of Modern Art film archive, in the Em Gee Film Library film library [16mm reduction positive], and in private film collections [16mm reduction positives]. DVD now available.
From Juliet Benita Colman: Ronald Colman, A
Very Private Person.
[pp.58-60] ‘After the big box-office success of
Stella Dallas, Ronnie went on loan to Warner’s for Lubitsch’s version of Oscar
Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan, an
enormously enterprising undertaking for a German director who spoke little
English, and who was determined to film Wilde’s story without using the
author’s famous epigrams. Responsible
for his own casting, Lubitsch had already commenced filming with Clive Brook in
the rôle of
‘Irene Rich: “The feeling between those two just
wasn’t good. Lubitsch being German,
Clive English, and the war pretty recent didn’t help the situation. He just didn’t want to do any more and
Warner’s were in a state, and they thought the one person who could do the part
would be Colman, who was under contract to Goldwyn. I was under contract to Warner’s for five
years, and it was in my contract that I was to be featured in every film, and
nobody billed above me. So Sam said
“Well, you wouldn’t let me have Irene when I wanted her a few weeks ago; no, I
won’t let you have Colman unless he gets top billing”. And, of course, a terrific
sum of money. This put Warner’s
in a spot, as I was always supposed to have top billing. But I said I thought it was marvellous that
they could get Ronnie to do the picture, and that I didn’t care what happened
to my name, so it was settled. Ronnie
was a gentleman, and you don’t find many of those. Anyhow, so that’s how he got the part of
‘Irene Rich: “Lubitsch had me dye my hair red for the role, so that I would feel more sophisticated and mature and rather wicked. (I was the same age as Ronnie.) He generally let you do your own part, then the moment he wasn’t satisfied, he would be helpful with suggestions. He would really get into a scene; one time he was sitting of a fifteen-foot scaffolding directing a scene, and he got so excited about somebody down there, he walked right off into midair! I had one scene with Ronnie when I was trying to look sophisticated and he was sitting next to me, he was so beautiful that I forgot every word I was supposed to say, didn’t remember a darn thing – just sat there and looked at him!”
‘Sam then read the script and telephoned Lubitsch in a rage, saying “Why didn’t you tell me it was a villain you wanted him to play?” Lubitsch’s English was not up to explanations on the telephone, and a conference was held immediately with Sam’s representative Mr Lehr, who demanded to know whether or not the rôle was that of a villain. “Villain?’ queried Ernst? “I don’t know what is villain. He love a beautiful girl if that is villain.” Mr Lehr pondered for a time and then with inspiration asked “Does he make a sacrifice?” “Ya, he lose the girl.”
‘Those were the magic words; he couldn’t be a villain if he sacrificed his love, and Ronnie was loaned on the further condition that Lubitsch use a credit line to the effect “Ronald Colman through courtesy of Sam Goldwyn”. Lubitsch did not let Ronnie forget this during the filming and would come up with reminders such as “Mr Colman, you walk across the room, you stop by the table, you pick up the book, then you look into the eyes of Miss McAvoy by courtesy of Sam Goldwyn!”
‘Ronnie accepted all this good-humoredly. He was intensely relieved that the deal had
finally been settled and that he was actually in this film playing
‘Irene Rich: “I had one scene with Ronnie when I was trying to look sophisticated and he was sitting next to me, he was so beautiful that I forgot every word I was supposed to say, didn’t remember a darn thing – just sat there and looked at him!”
“Ronnie and Lubitsch, very polite, very professional, sailed smoothly through their scenes. He took the latter’s direction, and if he didn’t like the way he was being directed in a particular scene, he would go through the motions as Lubitsch wanted them, then quietly talk it over and say “Would you mind if I do it this way?” As Ronnie neither clicks his heels nor snaps his head in the film, one presumes that either Lubitsch had given further thought to Clive’s remarks, or Colman had been more patiently and successfully persuasive on the subject.”
‘Bert Lytell was the husband and the diminutive actress who played Esther in Ben Hur was built both up and out to be the elegant Lady Windermere.
p.61] [Mary McAvoy] ‘I thought everyone in the film was good except me! I didn’t feel right in the part. For one thing, they had to build me up so much in height (I’m under five feet), because Ronnie [Colman] was not a short man, or Bert [Lytell]. In the party sequence, where Lady Windermere as the hostess, has to go around this group of people in a large room and speak to them all, they had to build a runway about eighteen inches high for me, because I was so short that if I were walking through the group, I couldn’t be seen by the camera! So I walked around on this crazy runway, which couldn’t be too wide because it would keep people away from me, and I was teetering on higher heels than I’d ever worn in my life. It was the same in every scene with Ronnie or any of the men, because I had to be more or less on their level to look dignified. hen they would cut to a long shot, and there I was down there!
‘I didn’t have much bosom in those days either. Bert was a great kidder and loved to have fun and would tease me about how the wardrobe department had filled me out. I’d walk on to the set and Bert would give me the eye and look directly there, and of course I’d die several deaths. Then Ronnie got into the act. He knew it embarrassed me and he and Bert would tease me together. He never started it, but he joined in, because he loved to laugh.
‘Lubitsch would tell us the day before which scenes we’d be starting; we’d do two or three walk-through, then he’d get down to the real rehearsals. The first take might not be quite right but he didn’t do ten or twelve takes like they do today. [This was just as well; Ronnie had spontanæity on the first three takes, after which he became mechanically perfect and the result was dull.] We had to learn the dialogue as it was written in the script, even though it wasn’t recorded, because you had to make sense in the scene. You had to mouth something or no expression would come across.
“I never knew anybody to have more beautiful manners than he had and who always did the right thing at the right time. I would like to have seen him slip just once! It would never have occurred to me to ask him anything personal. With somebody else, you might say “well, were you ever married?” or “Tell me something about yourself!” although he was kind and gentle, very friendly and sweet, there was a little wall built around him, and you never got beyond that. Not that he ever put it in words, but he wanted his private life to be his own, and he had a right to it. I think it would have been better for a lot of people if they had done that too.’
‘The film was a medium size success. One is conscious that it is a director’s film and not the actors’, all of whom are equally controlled. No star vehicle her. Happily, the film has gained attention and respect with age, and is still shown today as a silent “classic”.
‘Ronnie’s talent for light comedy (which he enjoyed doing enormously) had been well-exercised by Lubitsch.’
5.
Wilde on the Curriculum
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, George Moore and Vernon Lee) is also welcome.
As part of her course on Salome in the Department of Romance
Studies at
Madame Pouzet-Duzer has kindly provided us with this introduction to the video:
After a few warm-ups and discussions, I presented the painter Gustave Moreau to
my students. The power-point was a great way of showing them several Salomés
from this painter. After providing them
with images to describe and sometimes analyse, I ask them to come back to the
text. At home, they had to read a part from Huysmans’ A Rebours where des Esseintes is looking at two paintings from
Moreau. Their mission in class was to
find enough clues in the text to be able to choose
which two paintings were the ones the narrator was referring too – which they
managed to perfectly do. A follow-up of this activity is dealing with other
moments in the novel where Huysmans uses painting vocabulary in his
descriptions.
This is supplemented by the website http://lesvoilesdesalome.hautetfort.com/
6.
Work in Progress
In December 2006 we published a list of
fin-de-siècle doctoral theses being undertaken at
Kiri Bloom; MPhil; PT; 10/2006: Female
readers and political journalism in popular magazines 1837-1910
Sally Dugan; PhD; FT;
Natalya Elliot; MPhil; FT; 10/2007: Dreams
and nightmares in nineteenth century literature and thought
Emelyne Godfrey; PhD; FT;
Debbie Harrison; PhD; PT;
Katherine Inglis: PhD; FT; 10/2004: The
Nineteenth-century Self: Incoherence and Materiality
in Psychology and Literature
Jackie Marsh; PhD; FT;
Victoria Mills; PhD; FT;
Ben Winyard; MPhil; FT;
The date is the start date; FT=full time; PT = part time/
7.
A Wilde Collection
There is no universal handbook or vade mecum to the various Wilde Collections, and we have made a start here. 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 hope then to be able to bring these together as a new Appendix.
This month we give the following note, kindly
supplied by Dr Robin Darwall-Smith,
archivist at
Readers of THE OSCHOLARS may remember
reading of the death in 2001 of Mrs. Sheila Colman, the literary executor of
Lord Alfred Douglas. Mrs. Colman bequeathed her papers on
8.
Oscar Wilde and Robert Buchanan
Patrick
Regan, who has long been researching Robert Buchanan and who has furnished
us in the past with a note about Buchanan’s sympathy for the fallen Wilde, now
sends us this interesting citation, and equally interesting question..
I recently discovered the following article in The Guardian's archive and wondered if you could shed any light on the letter which is mentioned in it:
From The Guardian (
The Modern
First-Edition Craze.
The prices paid at
Sotheby’s to-day for first editions of Shaw, Hardy, Barrie, Wilde, and one or
two other modern authors will make many more of us think of having our
bookshelves "vetted." It is hard to convince most people who have
been buying books off and on for thirty years that they have not some book of
value under the new market conditions if they could only spot it. Of course the
people who have books with the author’s autograph are likely to know of it, and
those are the ones that fetch the top prices. But the ordinary first edition in
good condition by about twenty living authors has now high rarity value.
The biggest price to-day was £310 paid for a copy of Wilde’s "Salome"
inscribed in the handwriting of the author: "George Bernard Shaw, with the
author’s compliments. February, 93." And then presented
by Mr. Shaw to "Bertha Newcombe from G. Bernard Shaw, May, 1893."
Another first edition sold by Miss Newcombe was Shaw’s "Widowers’
Houses," inscribed by the author to the lady in May, 1893. It brought £155, and the "Unsocial Socialist" £142.
A first edition of Wilde’s "The Ballad of Reading
Gaol" was inscribed by the author to Robert Buchanan, and inserted in it
was a letter in Wilde’s handwriting about the officials of Reading Gaol,
written in Posilipo in November, 1897. It finishes: "For four days I have
had no cigarettes—no money to buy them—or no paper." This book and letter
fetched £170, which would have gone a long way to buy cigarettes and notepaper
for Wilde.
Do you know if the letter has ever been published anywhere? Or have you any idea of its current whereabouts? The reference to the cigarettes either refers back to Buchanan's plea in one of his letters to The Star that Wilde should be allowed "the sedative of the harmless cigarette" (rather ironic these days since prison is one of the few places one can now smoke in Britain), or else the letter itself is from when Wilde was actually in prison (which would make more sense), and the writer of the article made a mistake.
I know this is of scant interest to Wilde scholars, but I am working alone here and anything that relates Buchanan to the 'real world' of literature is important to me and it does look as though Wilde gave Buchanan a copy of "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" as thanks for his support. Any information you could offer would be greatly appreciated.
Best wishes,
Patrick Regan
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/robertbuchanan/index.html
We will very happy to pass on to Mr Regan any information sent to us.
9.
Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain (2)
We posted in our last is
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|
Lot 84 in Sotheby’s sale ‘English
Literature, History, Children's Books and Illustrations’, London, 13th December 2007 is a copy of Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper, which Wilde
inscribed to an unknown Joe Mack ‘For Joe Mack | from his | friend | Oscar
Wilde, | affectionately. | |
10.
Oscar Wilde and Katherine Mansfield (2)
Also in our last is
11.
Sir
Alfred Wills J
|
Mr Justice Wills (11th December 1828 – 9th August 1912) has a principal place in the gallery of those whom Wilde devotees hate most, for his reproaches to the hapless Oscar after the verdict and his sanctimonious application of the maximum penalty cannot be said to have been endearing. Perhaps he disliked sharing one of Wilde’s many names? The cartoon by ‘Spy’ (Vanity Fair 25th June 1896, shows a rather benign figure – indeed is titled ‘Benevolence on the Bench’, but another Irishman whom he tried, Arthur Lynch, left a less favourable description. Lynch was being tried for having fought on the Boer side in the South African war, and faced the death penalty. This is from My Life Story (London: John Long 1924) p.235: ‘I listened with complete contempt to Mr Justice Wills, whose little frame was trembling with excitement as he endeavoured to express abhorrence of my acts; but even then I could hardly forbear laughing when, in the climax of his eloquence, speaking of my injury to the Queen, he threw up his hands and exclaimed; “And what a Queen!”. I looked at him and at Webster*, and an infallible intuition swept across my mind: ‘Both these men are going to die soon, and here, trembling on the verge of the grave, they are cold-bloodedly defacing justice and setting up in the place of high dictates of ethical conduct mere miserable lies and hypocrisies which are the staple support of the political system which has produced these types!”’ *Sir Richard Webster, Counsel for the Crown |
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12.
London
This is a series of guided walks in
We used to draw readers' attention to the list of lectures taking place
in
13.
News of
closures at Archives, Kew and Warwick
The
reading rooms and other public areas of The
National Archives at Kew will be closed to visitors for essential building
work from:
* 21st to 27th January 2008 (inclusive)
All online services will be available as usual at nationalarchives.gov.uk
The Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick is undergoing a major re-shelving project early in 2008. Although it will still be open for researchers, a large number of collections will be unavailable from the end of January until the end of April. They are advising that any researchers intending to visit us during this period should contact them in advance of their visit.
14.
New
on-line database
[Copied from H-ALBION]
A new online database available from the Visual
Arts Data Service (VADS) offers the chance to explore nearly 8,000 European oil
paintings in
NICE Paintings (The National Inventory of Continental European Paintings) was
launched on
The database has been created by the National Inventory Research Project - a
groundbreaking research project designed to gather and present information
about
The Project Director, Andrew Greg, from the
The research project has been awarded grants from the Getty Foundation, the
Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
Research contributing to the database has also been made possible by research
grants from the Pilgrim Trust, made to 29 participating museums, and the Neil
MacGregor Scholarship scheme funded by the National Gallery Trust, which
supported ten scholars on the project.
The launch of the database coincides with a new exhibition at the National
Gallery,
For more information about the exhibition, visit the National Gallery website
at: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/discoveries/default.htm.
For more information about the project contact Andrew Greg, Director, National
Inventory Research Project at 
0141 330 8519
or 0141 423 7081 (a.greg@arthist.arts.gla.ac.uk)
15.
Broadcasts
The Picture
of Dorian Gray was broadcast in two episodes by the English wireless
station BBC7 in the week of 10th December 2007; and the French wireless station
Europe I broadcast an hour-long programme on Wilde where Frédéric Ferney talked about his new book Oscar Wilde ou les cendres de
la gloire (Paris: Editions Mengès) with Merlin Holland, 10th December.
Mr Holland also figured in a broadcast on Oscar Wilde in
Other recent broadcasts have been The Canterville Ghost, broadcast on BBC7 on 30th December and The Nightingale and the Rose, broadcast on BBC7 4th January.
IV.
THE CRITIC AS
CRITIC
Last month’s
review section contained reviews by Mark Llewellyn on Gyles
Brandreth’s murder mystery, Lucia Krämer on Susanne Bach’s exploration
of theatricality in James, Hardy, Collins, Wilde, Laurence Talairach-Vielmas
on Christine Ferguson’s brutal language, Cristina Pascal Aransáez on The
Judas Kiss in Madrid, Sujit Dutta on Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime in Nottingham, Maureen
O’Connor on Lady
Windermere’s Fan in Dublin, Keith
Connolly on Salome in Dublin, Melissa Jackson on The Importance of being Earnest
in San Marcos, Mark Tattenbaum
on The Importance of being Earnest in Buffalo, Bruce Bashford on The Zemlinsky Operas at Bard, Petra
ten-Doesschate Chu on Pissarro
in New York and
This month
we carry the following reviews
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|
|
|
|
|
|
Eiléan Ní
Chuilleanáin on Caspar Wintermans’ biography of Lord
Alfred Douglas |
Deirdre
McMahon on Toni Bentley’s book
on the Salome dancers, Sisters of
Salome |
|
Bart
Moore-Gilbert on Roberta Baldi’s
study of Kipling’s Departmental Ditties |
Laurence
Tailarach-Vielmas on Sarah Wilburn’s Possessed
Victorians: Extra Spheres in Nineteenth-Century Mystical Writings |
|
Marie-Luise
Kohlke on Oscar over coffee as seen by Merlin Holland |
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– and reviews of exhibitions of Moreau, Millais
and Walter Crane by Joni Spigler, Antoine Capet and Malcolm Hicks |
|
These
reviews may be found by clicking
Clicking
will take you to the Table of Contents of all our reviews,
which we are updating.
We welcome
offers to review from readers.
V.
BEING TALKED ABOUT: 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; to reach it, please click . We hope these Calls
may attract Wildëans.
We draw your attention particularly to
(a) This call from Alfred Drake:
I welcome abstracts and full essays for a
proposed volume on Oscar Wilde's critical
essays with an emphasis on how those texts were
received in the author's own time and how they have impacted contemporary
debates in criticism and theory. I will also consider abstracts that deal with
Wilde's fiction, poetry, or drama if they suit the collection's emphasis.
Abstracts should be approximately 500 words
long. Please submit abstracts (or full essays) in MS Word or RTF by email
attachment (or send inline) to Dr. Alfred J. Drake at ajdrake@ajdrake.com and include in your
email's subject heading the phrase "Wilde Collection" along with your
name. Please include a CV as a separate attachment, and if you maintain an
academic website, you are welcome to include the address. My preference is for
work that has not yet been published, but I will consider previously published
material. The extended deadline for abstracts is
(b)
this call for articles
for a Special Is
I am calling for submissions for a
special is
The field is open, but topics such
Æstheticism and/or decadence and Victorian visualities, technology,
architecture, or science in 19th-century painting, poetry, literature as
they ‘interface’ with related phenomena and art in modernism are welcome.
Deadline:
Send by attachment to: @ and @ or by post to Professor Laity, Department of
English, Drew University, 36 Madison Avenue, Madison, NJ 07940.
We have arranged with Professor Laity to publish
abstracts of the articles submitted to this special is
VI.
The Other Oscar
Our evidence for the existence of another Oscar Wilde in a parallel universe
‘Wilde felt confident enough [of a Magdalen Demyship] not to bother to take the Trinity examinations for his third year.’
– Richard
Ellmann: Oscar Wilde.
‘Oscar left Trinity after three years without taking a degree.’
–
‘Wilde left
– Anne
Varty: A Preface to Oscar Wilde.
VII. Oscar in Popular Culture
Éditions du Désastre have published their (French)
Literary Calendar for 2008, with a different writer featured each month. Only three of these are not French,
Cervantes, Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde,
who has the January page, with two paragraphs, in French and English from The Picture of Dorian Gray. (Last year, 2007, the same publisher featured
Poe, Shakespeare, Kafka and Wilde as their non-French authors, Wilde having the
November page with two different paragraphs from The Picture of Dorian Gray) .
We welcome news of Wilde on other calendars, in other countries.
VIII. Oscar Wilde: The Video
|
This month we note a DVD of Salome (once more). Alexia Anastasio and Kevin Sean Michaels have directed an all-female version, casting Alexia Anastasio, Monique Stines, Jolie Voltaire and Veronica Heffron, with music by Ari Lehman. Makeup & Special Effects by Shane McGowin; cinematography by Ted Ciesielski; produced by Matie Argiropoulos. It can be bought on line ($9.99) from www.Createspace.com/239888
(an off-shoot of Amazon) and a trailer can be seen on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/alexiaanastasio. |
|
Lilies and Sesame
This is the first, embryonic addressing of Ruskin
studies in our journal, under the guidance of Anuradha Chatterjee (
Two papers will be given at the Colloque
of the Société Française d’Études Victoriennes et Édouardiennes 'Représentations victoriennes et édouardiennes des quatre
éléments', Université de Provence (Aix-Marseille 1) 18th/19th January 2008 :
Laurence Gasquet
(Université Bordeaux III) : « Between
the heaven and man came the cloud » : John Ruskin et la
représentation des états de la matière dans Modern Painters.
Laurence Constanty (Université
Toulouse III): A world in stones: John Ruskin and Geology.
X.
Web Foot Notes
A look at websites of possible
interest. Contributions welcome here as elsewhere.
All the material that we have thus far published
in the 'Web Foot Notes' was brought together in June 2003 in one list called
'Trafficking for Strange Webs'. New websites will continue to be reviewed
here, after which they will be filed on the Trafficking for Strange Webs
page. 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 website two lists (‘Liens’
and ‘Liaisons’) of recommendations.
To see
‘Trafficking for Strange Webs’, click 
.
(A major
overhaul of this page is part of our reconstruction plans)
To see ‘Liens’, click here.
To see ‘Liaisons’, click here.
Robin Chamberlain writes
I'd like to invite all self-identified women (i.e. including trans-women) who are academics (grad students, profs, lecturers, past or present etc etc) to a list I've created, <women-academics@googlegroups.com>, which is a forum for women in academia to discuss concerns of particular interest to other women in what has historically been a male-dominated field... I have found this list wonderful as a forum for women to mentor each other and discuss concerns ranging from child-bearing and rearing (which I must stress our discussions embrace in all senses; many of our members, myself included, do not identify as heterosexual and/or have not had/do not envision having, children in a traditional heterosexual context , sexual harassment, discrimination (both explicit and subtle) etc etc in a non-judgemental, non-competitive way... in other words, this group values all families and diverse experiences of female parenthood),.. that being said, please don't let political correctness dampen your contributions...
I hope that both
grad students struggling with these is
Sites most recently visited :
(i) The Gothic Imagination, In our previous is
(ii)
(iii) Similarly, we refer readers to the discussion group moderated by Robin Chamberlain
(iv)
Victorian Plays Project. http://victorian.worc.ac.uk/modx/
is the home of the Victorian Plays Project.
The emphasis is Early and Mid Victorian.
Here you can search the
Play list for A-Z index by Author of over 350 e-texts available for
download
Catalogue for volume-by-volume catalogue of 1500 plays
Search the database of 350 plays for authors, titles, dates, and search
pdfs for keywords
Explore the database special function to search 30 encoded plays for stage
directions and textual references
Search the catalogue for title keywords, author, date, theatre
(v)
Victorian periodicals. Professor Rosemary VanArsdel's guide to research in Victorian periodicals,
with its annotated bibliography of selected titles in the field:
http://www.victorianresearch.org/periodicals.html. Long a touchstone for Victorianists, this
bibliography, which made its debut on the Victoria Research Web in January of
1999, and subsequently extensively updated and expanded, reached its eighth
edition in September 2007, and now covers 192 works of interest to students of
the 19th-centurypress. Professor VanArsdel, who is Distinguished Professor of English Emerita
at the
XI.
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
In October 2007 we were extremely pleased to
announce the creation of a Spanish bibliography of works on Oscar Wilde, compiled
specially for THE OSCHOLARS by Professor
Clicking on the icon below will lead to the
Bibliographies Table of Contents, with links to each.
XII. NEVER SPEAKING DISRESPECTFULLY: THE OSCAR WILDE SOCIETIES &
ASSOCIATIONS
Readers accustomed to checking here for news of
the Wilde Societies are advised that these now have their own page. To reach
it, please click
XIII. Acknowledgements
This is
the fifth is
Return to Table of
Contents | Return to hub page | Return to THE OSCHOLARS home page