THE
OSCHOLARS
___________
Vol. IV |
No. 10 |
Issue
no 42: October/November 2007
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for
the main pages of the current issue of THE
OSCHOLARS
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PUBLICATIONS
AND PAPERS
« Are there not books that can make us live more in
one single hour than life can make us live in a score of shameful years? »
We hope where appropriate to review in future issues at least some of the books
listed here. As always, we are happy to hear from anybody who would like to
review; and we are always willing to consider for publication abstracts or
précis of journal articles or published or unpublished doctoral theses.
As usual, names of subscribers to THE OSCHOLARS are printed in bold.
Books in French are covered more fully in our sister publication rue des beaux arts, the bimestrial bulletin of the
French branch of The Oscar Wilde Society, which can be accessed via our hub
page. This does not preclude reviews in THE OSCHOLARS.
Until this issue, we also included here a survey of Journals. Our continued reconstruction of our website has suggested a new free-standing page, and the survey will now be found as ‘The Rack & the Press’.
A list of recommended bookshops appears in our section ‘Some Sell and Others
Buy’. If ordering, please mention THE OSCHOLARS as this helps
ensure a flow of information.
TABLE OF CONTENTS II : Books, Articles & Papers on the
Period |
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on
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on
Somerville and Ross |
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on
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on
Octave Mirbeau |
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on
Dandies |
on
Valancourt Books |
We are pleased to announce the publication by
two of our Associate Editors, Sandra
Mayer and Barbara Pfeifer, of an
article on ‘The Reception of Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw in the Light of
Early Twentieth-Century Austrian Censorship’ in
the journal Platform (Postgraduate eJournal of Theatre & Performing Arts)
published at Royal Holloway College, University of London. Download it as a .pdf by clicking the link.
'An immensely enjoyable read which wears its learning
lightly. It might help to curb the scholarly paranoia about plagiarism and
might be read well beyond the academy.' Professor Declan
Kiberd, author of Irish Classics 'This book addresses the very controversial issue of
Oscar Wilde's "plagiarism" head-on, sifts through the evidence,
fully contextualises it inthe literary practices of decadent writers of the
1890s, and proposes a new theory to account for it.' Dr Jarlath Killeen,
'Florina Tufescu's book makes us rethink romanticism and
classicism as well as plagiarism. Beginning with the frequent historical
allegations of Wilde's plagiaristic techniques, Tufescu studies the modern
French and transatlantic roots of acknowledged and unacknowledged
intertextuality, and then analyzes romantic originality and classical
borrowing. She argues ultimately for the integrity of classical borrowing in
literary tradition. The most theoretically sophisticated study of plagiarism
since Paul Saint-Amour's TheCopywrights,
the book includes sections on intellectual property and copyright of use in
the classroom and on the internet.' Regenia Gagnier,
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Florina Tufescu is an Associate Editor of THE OSCHOLARS. |
The publication for 27th November of Oscar Wilde as a Character in Victorian Fiction
by Angela Kingston, our
Australian Associate Editor (
This book documents how Oscar Wilde was appropriated as a fictional
character by no less than thirty-two of his contemporaries. Focusing on
Wilde’s relationships with many of these writers, |
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‘This
book fills an important gap in the field. --
Frederick Roden, |
We
greatly welcome the publication of The
Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, by Jarlath
Killeeen ( |
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Sébastien Salbayre: ‘The language of
decadent childhood in Oscar Wilde's tales’ has been published (19th September
2007) in La Revue du GRAAT Volume 2, n°
36: Histoires d'enfant, histoires d'enfance / Stories for children, histories
of childhood (actes du colloque, Université François-Rabelais, 18th-19th
November 2005, ed. Rosie Findlay and
Sébastien Salbayre. Publisher :
Presses universitaires François-Rabelais, Tours ISBN 978-2-86906-234-4.
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A
new edition (bilingual, French and German) of the libretto of Salome
for the Strauss opera has been published ( |
Also
published, by Cerf in |
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Sarah E. Maier: ‘Symbolist Salomés and the Dance of Dionysus’, has been published in Nineteenth-Century Contexts (Vol. 28, No. 3, September 2006) 211-23 (pp. 220-1).
On 27th August Lutterworth Press published The Resurrection of Oscar Wilde: A Cultural Afterlife by Julia Wood. ISBN-10:
0718830717; ISBN-13: 978-0718830717
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Between
1995 and 2000 a number of events took place to commemorate the centenaries of
Oscar Wilde's conviction for gross indecency in |
Edinburgh
University Press publishes Henry James,
Oscar Wilde and Aesthetic Culture by Michèle Mendelssohn in the series Edinburgh Studies in
Transatlantic Literatures. ISBN 9780748623853 (074862385X) £65.00. Dr Mendelssohn edited our Richard Ellmann assessment, and is now
an Associate Editor of THE OSCHOLARS.
'In this incisive and wonderfully readable study, Michèle Mendelssohn shows how James and Wilde learned from each other's work, pondered each other's careers, and admired and disdained each other's gifts. Marked by brilliantly detailed renderings of period literary relations and deft close readings, Henry James, Oscar Wilde, and Aesthetic Culture intervenes powerfully in debates about taste, commodification, sexuality, professionalization, identity, and originality in Victorian and modernist literature and culture.'
–Douglas Mao, Associate Professor, Department of
English,
‘In this engrossing book, Michèle Mendelssohn challenges the longstanding
assumption that Henry James and Oscar Wilde shunned each other’s influence,
James because of homosexual panic, Wilde because of dandified indifference. On
the contrary, Mendelssohn demonstrates how their conflictual relationship,
comprised of esteem and contempt, admiration and frustration, attraction and
jealousy in equal measure, contributed to shaping the transatlantic culture of
aestheticism. Written with verve, and substantiated with meticulous research,
Mendelssohn’s study offers a fresh perspective on aestheticism while
illuminating the obscurities of a fascinating literary friendship.’
–Maud Ellmann, Donald and Marilyn
Keough Professor of Irish Studies, Department of English,
CONTENTS |
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A
new edition of Teleny
appeared last year, published by the independent publishing house Mondial in We will return to this edition in our Teleny special supplement, guest edited by John McRae, scheduled for Autumn 2008. Mondial also publish Recollections of Oscar Wilde by André Gide, Ernest La Jeunesse, and Franz Blei. ISBN: 9781595690814. 104pp. Paperback $13.85 Both
these books can be ordered directly from Mondial @ |
The Complete
Works of Oscar Wilde
The Complete
Works of Oscar Wilde, Volume IV: Criticism: Historical Criticism,
Intentions, The Soul of Man, edited by Josephine M. Guy, was published by
Oxford University Press on
The Brief
Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is
also available as an audiobook read by Jonathan Davis with
Staci Snell (16 Hours; 13 CDs) 9780143142805
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Callum James Books announce that they will be reprinting Vincent O’Sullivan’s Aspects of Wilde. We shall be reviewing this, and in future, paying more attention to the Victorian and Edwardian reprints from this small, independent publisher, which has also republished A.J.A. Symons’ Notes on Oscar Wilde. Orders can be placed at @
Editions Mengès announce the publication (27th
November) of Oscar Wilde ou les cendres
de la gloire by Frédéric Ferney. 220 pages,
200 illustrations ; soft cover 17.5 x 24.5 ISBN :
978-2-85620-479-5. 25 € |
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Frédéric Ferney was born in 1951, and presents a
books programme Le Bateau Livre on the television
channel France 5every Sunday. He is a novelist, dramatic critic, journalist and
presenter. He is the author of La Comédie Littéraire,
of l'Éloge de la France immobile, of Aragon, la seule façon
d'exister and of Le dernier amour de monsieur M. |
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Coffee with Oscar Wilde by Merlin Holland with a foreword by Simon Callow (144 pages) was published by Duncan Baird in September. The publisher’s description runs Oscar
Wilde’s own grandson, with the help of actor and author Simon Callow—who has
performed Wilde’s work on stage—capture the essence of this wittiest of all
playwrights. Set in Paris, where he fled after the scandalous trial that
revealed his homosexuality, Wilde chats about language, his mother (an
esteemed Irish folklorist), transforming his life into a work of art (“My
great tragedy is that I put my genius into my life—and only my talent into my
work”), his time in prison, his concept of morality, and why he thinks “in
life, style, not sincerity, is essential.” This will be reviewed in THE OSCHOLARS by Dr Marie-Luise Kohlke,
University of Swansea. |
The publishing house Txalaparta recently published De Profundis, translated into Basque by Aitor Arana. |
Photo: ©txalaparta.com |
‘Wilde's
Renaissance: Poison, Passion, and Personality’ by Yvonne Ivory has been published in Victorian Literature and Culture, Volume 35, Issue 02,
September 2007, pp 517-536.
Published online by Cambridge University Press 29th June 2007. The abstract is available on line.
Editing Journalism:
The Case of Oscar Wilde
John Stokes
(King's College London) and Mark Turner (King's College London) gave a paper on
‘Editing
Journalism: The Case of Oscar Wilde’ on Friday, 16th March 2007
at the Society
for Textual Scholarship’s 14th Biennial International Interdisciplinary
Conference at New York University.
Lawrence Phillips (ed.): A Mighty Mass of Brick and Smoke, Victorian and Edwardian Representations of London. Amsterdam/New York, NY,: Rodopi, 2007. 306 pp. Hb: 978-90-420-2290-4€ 62 / US$ 87. Series: DQR Studies in Literature.
Of all eras of London’s history, the Victorian and Edwardian city continues to stimulate the literary, visual, and popular imaginations like no other. This collection explores the unique relationship between the literary, and more broadly, artistic imagination and experience of the Victorian and Edwardian city. It includes some major figures such as Wordsworth, Dickens, and James, but also other writers and artists who are all but forgotten. Bringing together some of the leading scholars working on representations of Victorian and Edwardian London, this collection will be of interest to scholars, researchers and students working on literary London and more broadly the urban in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries. This will be reviewed for THE OSCHOLARS by Professor John Batchelor, University of Newcastle, England. |
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Contents
1.
Lawrence Phillips: Introduction: A
Mighty Mass of Brick and Smoke |
2. L.J.
Nicoletti: Morbid Topographies: Placing Suicide in Victorian London |
3.
Efraim Sicher: The ‘Attraction of Repulsion’: Dickens, Modernity, and
Representation |
4. Adam
Hansen: Exhibiting Vagrancy, 1851: Victorian London and the ‘Vagabond Savage’ |
5.
David Skilton: ‘When Dreams are Coming’: Wordsworth, Jefferies and Visions of
the London Crowd |
6. Philip
Tew: James Thomson’s London: Beyond the Apocalyptic Vision of the City |
7.
Keith Wilson: Surveying Victorian
and Edwardian Londoners: George R. Sims’ Living London |
8. Dehn
Gilmore: Rehearsals, Refutations, Representation: Gissing’s New Grub
Street and the Problem of an Urban Realism |
9.
Julian Wolfreys: The Hieroglyphic
Other: The Beetle, London, and the Abyssal Subject |
10 Alan
Robinson: Socio-Spatial Relations in Henry James’ The Wings of the Dove |
11.
Lawrence Phillips: Jack London and
the East End: Socialism, Imperialism and the Bourgeois Ethnographer |
12. Anne
Witchard: Thomas Burke: Son of London |
13.
Samantha Matthews: The London Necropolis: Suburban Cemeteries and the
Necropolitan Imaginary |
Notes on
Contributors – Index |
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Conceiving the City: London, Literature, and Art 1870-1914 by Nicholas Freeman has been published by Oxford University Press. Dr Freeman’s article ‘Wilde's Edwardian Afterlife: Somerset Maugham, Aleister Crowley, and The Magician’ is announced as a forthcoming publication in Literature & History 2007 |
‘The
Myth of the Female Dandy’ by Miranda Gill. French
Studies Vol. 61, No. 2 April 2007 pp.
167-181.
http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/61/2/167
‘Plagiarism, popularity, and the dilemma of artistic worth:
E. OE. Somerville and Martin Ross's Some
Experiences of an Irish R.M. (1899)’ by Anne Jamison, School of
Languages and Literature, University of Ulster. Coleraine. Northern Ireland, European Journal of English Studies,
Vol. 11, Issue 1 April 2007, pp. 65 – 78.
This essay focusses on the unpublished legal papers relating to the
19th-century Irish women authors E. OE. Somerville (1858 - 1949) and Martin
Ross (1862 - 1915) and their case of plagiarism against the authors of By the Brown Bog in 1913. The article
begins by summarising the ways in which the introduction of copyright law in
Great Britain in 1709 altered aesthetic and legal definitions of authorship,
and how this new conceptualisation of the author figure effectively
disenfranchised collaborative modes of creativity and literary production. In
so doing, the essay investigates Somerville and Ross's classification as
popular,
collaborative short story writers. The popularity of their Irish R.M. tales, it
will be argued, harmed their case of plagiarism. The study will use a detailed
analysis of Somerville and Ross's legal correspondence to argue for the ways in
which copyright law not only defined the 'author', but also the term
'originality', which was sorely affected by aesthetic and moral conceptions of
'good' and 'bad' literature.
Pierre Michel
(Société Octave Mirbeau) writes
Chers
collègues,
J'ai le
plaisir de vous informer de la parution, à l'occasion du très riche et
passionnant colloque Octave Mirbeau de Strasbourg, d'un joli petit volume illustré intitulé Un aller simple pour l'Octavie. Il s'agit d'un ensemble de textes
recueillis par Kinda Mubaideen,
de l'université de Strasbourg, et inspirés par La 628-E8 d'Octave
Mirbeau. Ils sont rédigés par des participants, de toutes nationalités, aux
ateliers d'écriture animés par Kinda Mubaideen, à Strasbourg et à
Sarajevo (où ont collaboré amicalement des Bosniaques, des Serbes et des
Croates). L'artiste strasbourgeois Lolo
Wagner en a assuré les nombreuses illustrations (36 en tout).
En même temps
qu'un hommage à Mirbeau et à sa 628-E8, il s'agit d'un travail qui
contribue à rapprocher les peuples et les cultures, conformémant au voeu le
plus cher de l'imprécateur au coeur fidèle. Et quel bel hommage, aussi, à la
langue et à la littérature françaises de la part d'étudiants et traducteurs
étrangers !
Ce beau petit
volume illustré, édité par la Société
Octave Mirbeau, peut être commandé
à la Société Mirbeau, 10 bis rue André Gautier, 49000 - ANGERS.
Son prix est de 10 euros franco.
James D Jenkins and Valancourt Books announce their latest publications of new scholarly editions of Victorian-era texts.
Round the Red Lamp and Other Medical Writings by Arthur Conan Doyle, edited by Robert Darby. Includes the 1894 short story collection Round the Red Lamp, plus three previously uncollected stories and a generous selection of Dr. Doyle's nonfiction medical writings.
The Rose and the Key (1871) by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, edited by Frances Chiu. Features a groundbreaking new introduction, arguing for reconsideration of Le Fanu's politics and a reading of the novel as a commentary on Anglo-Irish tensions; this edition is the first to reprint the original serialized text of the novel.
Mystery of the Sea (1902) by Bram Stoker, edited by Carol A. Senf.
The Garden God (1905) by Forrest Reid, edited by Michael Matthew Kaylor. A meticulous scholarly edition of Reid's controversial novel of love between two schoolboys. Dedicated to Henry James, Reid's idol, the book was condemned by James, who never spoke to Reid again.
The King's Assegai, The Weird of Deadly Hollow, and Renshaw Fanning's Quest by Bertram Mitford, edited by Gerald Monsman. Three 1890s adventure novels dealing with life in South Africa before and after British colonization.
Nada the Lily (1892) by H. Rider Haggard, edited by Gerald Monsman. Haggard's adventure/romance/fantasy set among the Zulus, before British colonization.
More information on these and other titles can be found on the website at http://www.valancourtbooks.com, along with information for those interested in contributing an introduction for a future edition.
Announcement from Taylor & Francis - Arts & Humanities Collection
The Arts & Humanities Collection features online content published by Routledge between 1997 and the present day. 93 journal titles are available to explore online via the easily searchable informaworldT platform. 28 journals are listed in Thomson Scientific's Arts & Humanities Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index. The Arts & Humanities Collection covers History, Literature, Language & Linguistics, Music, Philosophy, Religion, Theatre & Performance and Visual Arts.
The Arts & Humanities Collection includes:
Contemporary British History - an iFirst title giving immediate access to the latest key research articles
Prestigious titles such as Slavery & Abolition, Atlantic Studies and Social History
Heritage titles such as Journal of Imperial & Commonwealth History - now in its 34th year of publication
Journals published in association with prominent societies such as Intellectual History Review - the official journal of the International Society for Intellectual History
For more information on the Arts & Humanities Collection, please visit www.informaworld.com/librarians_artscollection
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