An Electronic Journal for the Exchange of Information
on Current Research, Publications and Productions
concerning
Oscar Wilde and His Circles
Vol. I No. 4
September 2001
The third issue of THE OSCHOLARS continued the journal’s progress, with circulation up from 189 to 241. This, the fourth, issue will be transmitted to 288 readers in twenty-seven countries, the majority in from one or other of over a hundred and forty universities or university colleges. It is also now accessible in the City Library, Ystad, Sweden; the National Library of Ireland; and the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. As always, suggestions for improvements, additions and above all corrections, are very welcome indeed.
We should like the October edition to carry information about celebrations of Wilde’s birthday, and look forward to news.
Nothing in THE OSCHOLARS© is copyright to the Journal unless indicated by ©, and the usual etiquette of attribution will doubtless be observed. Please feel free to 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. I wish to thank my colleague Dr John Phelps for much technical advice with this edition, and Ms Betsy Norris for designing the masthead.
Names emboldened in the text below are those of subscribers to THE OSCHOLARS, who may be contacted through Melmoth@aliceadsl.fr.
Editor:
D.C. Rose
1 rue Gutenberg
75015 Paris.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Clicking on the
entry should take you directly to the section
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I. GUIDANCE FOR SUBMISSIONS |
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II. NEWS FROM SUBSCRIBERS |
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1. Publications and Papers |
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2. Work in Progress |
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Wilde on the
Curriculum |
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4. Picked from the Platter |
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III. NEWS FROM ELSEWHERE |
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1. Exhibition: Oscar Wilde: A Life in
Six Acts |
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2. Conference: Oscar Wilde in His Times
and Ours |
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3. Conference Panel: Oscar and Willie
and Jane - Call for Papers |
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4. Publication |
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5. Other Conferences which may have a
bearing on Wilde |
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IV. NOTES AND QUERIES |
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1. The late Dorothy Tutin 1934 - 2001 |
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2. Lord Alfred Douglas |
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3. Henry Arthur Jones |
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4. An Uncollected Letter of Oscar
Wilde’s |
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5. Notes towards an Iconography of Wilde |
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6. Oscar in Popular Culture |
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7. Wilde as Unpopular Culture |
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8. Corrigendum |
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V. PRODUCTIONS DURING SEPTEMBER 2001 |
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Austria |
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Canada |
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England |
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Germany |
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Roumania |
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Switzerland |
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VI. WEB FOOT NOTES |
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VII. SOME SELL AND OTHERS BUY |
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VIII. A WILDE SEPTEMBER |
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IX. THE OSCAR WILDE SOCIETY AND THE WILDEAN |
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I. GUIDANCE FOR SUBMISSIONS
Publication is on the last day of each month (or if this is not possible, the first day of the next); copydate is not later than the 25th.
Please specify if you wish your e-mail address to be included.
Work in Progress: Please give the provisional title, status (e.g. article, book, M.A. Dissertation, Ph.D. thesis etc.) and where appropriate your university affiliation.
Publications: Full title, publisher, place and date of publication as usual, ISBN if possible.
Notices: If you are kindly submitting notices of events, such as conferences, productions, broadcasts or lectures, please include as many details as you can: venue, date, time, and contact address if possible or relevant.
Notes & Queries: These can include points that you might like to see discussed in a ‘Letters to the Editor’ column.
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II. NEWS FROM SUBSCRIBERS
1. Publications and Papers
Noreen Doody (Trinity College, Dublin) is giving a paper on ‘Dorian Gray: An Irish Novel?’ on 15th September in the Conference ‘Facts and Fictions: Ireland and the Novel in the Nineteenth Century’ at the Centre for Editorial and Intertextual Research, the University of Wales at Cardiff. We reprint, by kind permission, the abstract:
‘The Picture of Dorian Gray does not reveal the beauties of the Irish landscape nor narrate a story of the nation’s joys and woes, yet it tells a "national tale". Truth, according to Wilde, is a matter of style and it is in the style of his novel that he communicates his story of Ireland. The mid-nineteenth century, Yeats observed, was a time when "the Ireland created by English politics reached its climax, and its products were men like Shaw, Wilde and George Moore ... They had no home in Ireland and England was always a foreign country." Yeats observes the dispossession of Wilde’s generation: Ireland was governed by England, its laws, social and cultural mores dictated by that country. Ireland lacked the right to self-determination and was denied the responsibility of self-government. For many, including Wilde, displacement and a certain sense of rootlessness were the corollary of this position. The recipient of a bi-cultural heritage, Wilde lived in two countries and belonged fully to neither, so he took up residence in the liminal realm of the imagination and dealt with his problematic issue of identity by creating a new self and a fictive world.
‘The Picture of Dorian Gray is an entirely imaginative creation, ungrounded as far as possible in the substantial; it takes place in an imaginary landscape, peopled by exotics. Dispossessed from landscape and national context, Wilde’s tale of Ireland is one of absence, ambiguity and displacement.’
Christopher S. Nassaar (American University, Beirut) writes ‘I have done a lot of work on Wilde recently.
ANTHOLOGIES
1.
The English Literary Decadence: An Anthology (Lanham, New York
and Oxford: UP of America, 1999).
ISBN 0-7618-1426-4. This
anthology provides a comprehensive selection of the English Decadent prose and
poetry of the 1890s, while also redefining Decadence and broadening its
boundaries. The center piece of
the book is Wilde’s Salome.
Pater’s The Renaissance is also included in its entirety, since
it was the seminal work that inspired the Decadent movement. Also included entire is Conrad’s Heart
Of Darkness, which is presented as a post-Decadent novelette responding to,
and ultimately indicting, the Decadent movement. 416 pages plus a
long introduction.
2. The Victorians: A Major Authors Anthology (Lanham, New York and Oxford: UP of America, 2000). ISBN 0-7618-1710-7
From the Preface: ‘The purpose of this anthology is […] to redefine the major Victorian authors (excluding the novelists), to offer a generous selection of their work for convenient classroom use, and to provide comprehensive annotations and useful commentaries. […] The recent revaluation of Victorian literature has produced significant changes that are not reflected in available anthologies […] Oscar Wilde’s reputation has soared and he cannot any longer be ignored as a major Victorian prose writer […] This is the only anthology of Victorian poetry and prose to present Wilde as the last of the great Victorians, offering a comprehensive selection of his entire œuvre. The ten writers included are: Carlyle, Mill, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Hopkins, Ruskin, Newman, Pater and Wilde. 806 pages plus an introduction. 180 pages of Wilde material.
3. Other Victorian Authors And Major Victorian Debates (Lanham, New York and Oxford: UP of America, 2001). ISBN 0-7618-1941-X. This anthology is a supplement to The Victorians, and is designed for teachers and students who do not wish to limit themselves to the ten major writers listed above. The first part focuses on the secondary layer of Victorian poetry and prose - the Rossettis, Barrett Browning, Swinburne, and so on - while the second part concentrates on the major debates that raged during the Victorian period: Evolution and Christianity, Industrialism and Materialism, The Status of Women. Wilde is represented in the ‘Status of Women’ section. 307 pages.
ARTICLES
1. ‘Pater’s The Renaissance and Wilde’s Salome’, in The Explicator, volume 59 (Winter 2001), 80-82. This essay explores the full influence of Pater’s book on Wilde’s play.
2. ‘The Farquhar and Arbuthnot Connections in Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance’ in Notes and Queries (New Series, volume 48), no. 2, June 2001, 158-162. This essay reinforces the argument that Wilde’s play has a profound subversive meaning by tracing its roots to George Farquhar’s The Constant Couple and to John Arbuthnot’s satirical writings.’
Margaret D. Stetz (Georgetown University) is giving a paper on ‘Oscar Wilde Moviestar’ at the Conference: ‘Oscar Wilde in His Times and Ours’ (see below).
2. Work in Progress
Paul Kinsella (University of British Columbia) writes that his Ph.D. thesis is called ‘"We Must Return to the Voice": Oral Traditions and Values in the Works of Oscar Wilde’.
‘In this thesis I examine the development of Wilde’s sensibility, and consequently his work, as a symbiosis of oral and chirographic elements, along some of the lines suggested by Walter Ong in Orality and Literacy (1982). My central focus is on the Wilde of the late 1880s, and his critical essays The Decay of Lying and The Critic as Artist, which I read as expressions of the unique balance of his dual sensibility, which was intensified by friction with the surrounding cultural context. Among the differences from previous studies which emerge in this portrayal are a greater emphasis on the influence of Mahaffy, and (I hope) a clearer view of the intensity of Wilde’s commitment to an idealized vision of oral/poetic values.’
3. Wilde on the Curriculum
The Picture of Dorian Gray (with Mary Braddon: Lady Audley’s Secret, Bram Stoker: Dracula and Robert Louis Stevenson: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) was taught by Judith Fisher (Trinity University, Texas) on this year’s British Studies at Oxford summer course at St John’s College, Oxford.
Richard Freed (Eastern Kentucky University) writes that he ‘conducted a course on Wilde and Dickens in London (1st July to 6th August) at King’s College, Hampstead, with American students from across the United States under the auspices of the Cooperative Center for Study Abroad (CCSA). The course was entitled Dickens and Wilde: Two Anti-Victorians. The students were much happier to be reading and loving Wilde, I report, as a lover of Dickens AND Wilde, with some mixed feelings. The class definitely cultivated a new crop of potential Oscholars - well, maybe.’
Joan Navarre taught a course on Wilde at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, spring 1999. Her article ‘Oscar Wilde, the Æsthetic Movement and Victorian Trade Cards’ appeared in The Advertising Trade Card Quarterly, Fall 1999
4. Picked from the Platter
David Hegarty (University of Tübingen) has placed a notice that advertises THE OSCHOLARS on the notice board of the Irish Theatre research group. http://www.kbx7.de/list?enter=IrishTheatre
Claudia Letat has placed a notice that advertises THE OSCHOLARS on the notice board of her website ‘Oscar Wilde - Ode an ein Genie’ http://www.besuche-oscar-wilde.de/(see below under WEB FOOT NOTES)
Leon Litvack (Queen’s University, Belfast) has placed a notice that advertises THE OSCHOLARS on the notice board of the Society for the Study of Nineteenth Century Ireland. http://www.qub.ac.uk/english/socs/ssnci
We very grateful for these endorsements and recommend the sites to the notice of our readers.
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III. NEWS FROM ELSEWHERE
1. Exhibition: Oscar Wilde: A Life in Six Acts
The British Library Exhibition Oscar Wilde a Life in Six Acts, curated by Sally Brown, opens at the Morgan Library, New York, on 14th September and runs to 13th January 2002. The Library is at 29 East 36th Street between Madison & Fifth Avenues
2. Conference: Oscar Wilde in His Times and Ours
There will be a two-day conference at The Morgan Library, New York, Friday and Saturday, 26th and 27th October, in association with the exhibition Oscar Wilde: A Life in Six Acts, and supported in part by the William Morris Society in the United States.
Friday,
26th October (evening lecture)
Sally Brown, Curator of Modern Literary Manuscripts at the British Library (and curator of the BL’s Wilde exhibition): ‘Constance Wilde: A Woman of Some Importance.’
Saturday,
27th October
Moderator: Norman Kelvin, Distinguished Professor of English, City College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York
Karl Beckson (Professor of English, Brooklyn College, City University of New York): ‘Oscar Wilde and the Religion of Art.’
Debra N. Mancoff (art historian and Scholar in Residence at the Newberry Library, Chicago): ‘Wilde, The Grosvenor Gallery, and Æstheticism.’
Talia Schaffer (Assistant Professor of English, Queens College, City University of New York): ‘A Lily in His Medieval Hand: Oscar Wilde and Æsthetic Dress Reform.’
Margaret D. Stetz (Associate Professor of English and Women’s Studies, Georgetown University): ‘Oscar Wilde, Moviestar.’
J. Rigbie Turner (Mary Flagler Cary Curator, Music Manuscripts and Books, Morgan Library): ‘Strauss, Salomé, and Mr. Morgan: An Opera Banned.’
Reservations required. There will be a charge. Members of the William Morris Society will receive free admittance to the event if they confirm their attendance. Respond by phone at 212.590.0333 or by email at mailto:rsvp@morganlibrary.org by 15th October. The Morgan Library is located at 29 East 36th Street, New York.
Information kindly supplied by Mark Samuels Lasner (William Morris Society of America)
3. Conference Panel: Oscar and Willie and Jane - Call for Papers
It is proposed to have a panel on the three Wildes and their journalistic work at the Conference ‘Places of Exchange: Magazines, Journals and Newspapers in British and Irish Culture 1688-1945’, University of Glasgow 25th-27th July, 2002.
http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/EngLit/news_files/call01.html
Papers would be twenty minutes in duration. Contact Alison Chapman A.Chapman@englit.arts.gla.ac.uk or David Rose melmoth@aliceadsl.fr.
4. Publication
Robert Combs’ ‘A Complex Beauty: Romantic Irony in Oscar Wilde and Eugene O’Neill’ is published in John Quinn: Selected Irish Writers from His Library. Edited by Janis and Richard Londraville. Locust Hill Literary Studies No. 30. West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill Press. 2001
5. Other Conferences which may have a bearing on Wilde
(Any specific papers on Wilde will be noted in future issues of THE OSCHOLARS)
CALL FOR PAPERS: Seeking papers for the Gay and Lesbian Studies panels for the 2002 Popular Culture/American Culture Associations conferences, to be held in Toronto March 13th to 16th 2002.
Send an abstract of 100-200 words to amoore@olemiss.edu by September 15th. Papers can deal with any aspect of Gay and/or Lesbian culture as represented in literature, film, television, the press, etc. Also any work dealing with Queer Theory is welcome. Presentations will be expected to be approximately 20 minutes in length.
You must be a member of the PCA/ACA to participate in the conference. The membership fee is $35 for each person.
For further information with regards to guidelines for abstracts or association membership e-mail mailto:amoore@olemiss.edu or write to: Alida Moore, 2014 Barry, Oxford MS 38655 (662) 236-5612
CALL FOR PAPERS: NEMLA Toronto, Canada 12th to 13th April 2002
Session Title: Victorian Landscape. Descriptions. The panel solicits papers on Victorian landscape descriptions (fictional or factual, prose or verse) that embody important ideological issues of the period: cultural, aesthetic, moral, social, political, philosophical, scientific, religious, gender.
Please send abstracts (hardcopy or electronic) by 15th September to: Bill Mistichelli, English Department, Penn State Abington, Abington, PA 19001 (215) 8817531/Voice Mail wxm3@psu.edu
CALL FOR PAPERS: NEMLA Toronto, Canada 12th to 13th April 2002
Session Title: ‘Why Jenny, as I Watch You There’: The Dynamics of Voyeurism and Exhibitionism in Victorian Literature.
The panel solicits papers on the presence of voyeurism and exhibitionism in Victorian literature. It is interested in the ways in which various sites of desire are characterized by the dynamics of watching and being watched and in what such sites can reveal about the erotics and politics of the age. Questions that might be considered are those of privacy, shame, fear of or desire for public exposure, guilt, and desire that come into play in such sites.
Please send abstracts by 15th September to:
Robert E. Lougy Department of English Penn State University, University Park, PA 16802 (814) 863-0283 (Voice mail) Fax: (814) 863-7285. mailto:rxl1@psu.edu
CALL FOR PAPERS: NEMLA Toronto, Canada 12th to 13th April 2002
Queer/Postcolonial
This session invites papers exploring crossovers between queer and postcolonial theories in film and literature. Thematic possibilities include intersections of gender, sexuality and citizenship, issues of "boundary crossings", and formulations of history and identity.
Please submit one-page abstracts by September 15 with contact information via email, fax, or snail mail to:
Lorena Russell,
Department of English, CB#3520 Greenlaw Hall, University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520, fax: (919) 962-3520. e-mail: lorenar@email.unc.edu
CALL FOR PAPERS: Society for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Ireland ó Tenth Annual Conference
‘The Irish Revival Reappraised’, All Hallows College, Dublin, 28th-30th June 2002. http://www.qub.ac.uk/english/socs/2002Conf.htm
The conference will feature the work of both established and emerging scholars. Please submit proposals for papers (c. 200 words) by 10 December 2001.
All correspondence and enquiries to:
Dr E.A. Taylor-FitzSimon, Department of English, All Hallows College, Grace Park Rd, Drumcondra, Dublin 9, Ireland. tayfitz@indigo.ie.
CALL FOR PAPERS: American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference 2002 In conjunction with the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras San Juan, Puerto Rico April 11-14, 2002
Deadline: 1 October 2001.
‘Self-translation/Translation and the Self’
‘I am interested in papers that examine any aspect of self-translation ó that is, an author’s translation of his/her own texts--or any aspect of the intersections between an author-translator’s work as an author and his/her work as a translator (of his/her own texts or the texts of another).’
Please send 250-word abstracts by 1 October 2001 to Corinne Scheiner mailto:cscheiner@coloradocollege.edu. Please also cc the conference organizer, Kathleen Komar, at komar@ucla.edu.
For more information on the conference, please see the conference website: http://www.complit.ucla.edu/acla02.
Corinne Scheiner, Maytag Assistant Professor Comparative Literature, The Colorado College, 14 East Cache, La Poudre Street, Colorado Springs, CO 80903 719/389-6238 tel; 719/389-6179 fax; cscheiner@coloradocollege.edu.
This seems to beg for a paper on Salome.
6. Born to be Wilde
This one-man show about Vyvyan Holland by James Walker can now be seen as a webcast on the computer at http://www.virtuetv.com/lifestyle/wilde/index.html but be warned, our iMac’s memory was exhausted before it had finished ‘buffering’. The Born to be Wilde page is at www.backhill.net/oscar
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IV. NOTES AND QUERIES
1. The late Dorothy Tutin 1934 - 2001
We note with regret the death on 6th August of Dorothy Tutin, who played Cicely Cardew to Joan Greenwood’s Gwendolen in Anthony Asquith’s 1952 film of The Importance of being Earnest. She was the last survivor of the cast.
Dorothy Tutin, actress, born London 8th April 1934; died
London 6th August 2001
2. Lord Alfred Douglas
Trevor Fisher writes ‘I am appealing for information on the whereabouts of the letters Douglas wrote to his mother from Egypt in 1893-94, quoted by both Croft Cooke and Montgomery Hyde. Mary Hyde bought the file from the Colmans, but her secretary tells me they are not in the file in New Jersey’. trevor@lanefisher.fsnet.co.uk
v Trevor Fisher’s article ‘The Mysteries of Oscar Wilde’ appeared in History Today vol. 50 no.12, December 2000. He is currently writing on the Douglas-Wilde relationship.
3. Henry Arthur Jones
As is well known, Wilde had a poor opinion of Jones. What has been largely overlooked, we feel, is Jones’ The Triumph of the Philistines or How Mr Jorgan Protected the Morals of Market Pewsbury under Very Trying Circumstances. This opened at the St James’ on 11th May 1895, just after the Wilde trials, in the theatre in which The Importance of being Earnest had just been cancelled. Barry Duncan points out that ‘Market Pewsbury’ echoes ‘Marquess of Queensberry’ and that Jorgan was made up as the Marquess (Barry Duncan: The St James’ Theatre, Its Strange and Complete History. London: Barrie & Rockcliff 1964 p.244).
Has anyone worked on this play and its genesis and reception?
4. An Uncollected Letter of Oscar Wilde’s
The following letter from Oscar Wilde to Walter Crane does not appear in Hart-Davis & Holland. Undated from 16 Tite Street, it refers to a verse by Crane’s daughter Beatrice.
‘My Dear Crane,
Many thanks for the charming design and for Beatrice’s pretty little poem. I will have it reproduced at once.
Very truly yours,
Oscar Wilde
(A horrid pen)’
Walter Crane: An Artist’s Reminiscences. London: Methuen & Co 1907 p.195. There is also a photographic reprint, Detroit: Singing Tree Press 1968. This letter is also reprinted in E.H. Mikhail: Oscar Wilde, Interviews and Recollections. London: Macmillan 1979 Volume I p.151.
5. Notes towards an Iconography of Wilde
There is a picture of Wilde by Timor Novikov "Oskar Wilde and Locket, 1993" in Edward Lucie-Smith: Movements in Art since 1945, new edition. Thames & Hudson World of Art. London 2001, p.282
v Information kindly supplied by Christa Maria Lerm-Hayes (National College of Art & Design, Dublin)
The following image appears on the home page of the Department of English, University of Southern Maine:
6. Oscar in Popular Culture
The continuing search for Wilde’s more unlikely manifestations.
http://ukhumour.about.com/library/oscar/bloscar29.htm takes one to the first page of a cartoon called Oscar Mild and his Irritable Owl. ‘Isn’t it a pity? Oscar just cannot be witty. Follow Oscar’s pathetic weekly efforts to try and emulate his literary almost namesake and impress his cynical furry chum - St John (pronounced Sinjun)’. To read on, one must subscribe to the Humour UK Newsletter (there is a form), but we confess our courage failed us. With blatant disregard of copyright we reproduce the accompanying picture:
This Oscar Mild is not to be confused with Oscar Wilde Mild, a beer that won second prize last April at a beer festival in Basingstoke (England) sponsored by a brewery called Beckett’s. Nothing to do with the Macon country, of course. One may also note in rapid passing ‘the Montague Community Band [which] saw its beginnings when Oscar Milde & six beginners on different instruments formed the Germania Cornet Band in Turners Falls in 1892.’ [www.crocker.com/~jlr/history.htm].
Another Oscar Milde is a cartoon character created by Diane Tran [www.geocities.com/escottish140/Cast/castpastMilde.htm], one of a number of cartoons of Wilde characters cleverly re-named, and owing something to the Disney cartoon film, The Great Mouse Detective, itself a Sherlock Holmes derivative. Ms Tran writes also writes the story of Oscar Milde. This is a remarkably elaborate and rather engaging undertaking.
Sebor Absinth is advertising a cocktail called the Wilde Mule:
1 shot Sebor Absinth, freshly squeezed lime juice, top up with ginger ale. (From The London Review of Books 19th July). Does anyone know of any other Wilde cocktails?
7. Wilde as Unpopular Culture
How far Wilde Studies have come may be judged from this tepid entry on him in the Cambridge History of English and American Literature (1907-21). Volume XIV. The Victorian Age, Part Two. III. Critical and Miscellaneous Prose. § 18. Oscar Wilde.
While Pater represented the æsthetic movement in its most earnest phase, Oscar Wilde gave utterance to its principles in the language of persiflage. In verse and in prose, in lyrics, in "trivial comedies for serious people" that sparkled with wit, in essays often bright with raillery and occasionally weighty with thought, he proved that he possessed a remarkably varied genius. The Ballad of Reading Gaol and De Profundis are the product of his tragic overthrow, and are well worth all that he had previously written.
8. Corrigendum
The reference to Micheál MacLiámmóir in THE OSCHOLARS 1/2 should have been to Micheál MacLiammóir. We are grateful to Richard Pine for pointing this out.
v
Richard Pine is the author of The Thief of Reason: Oscar Wilde and Modern
Ireland. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1995.
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V. PRODUCTIONS DURING SEPTEMBER 2001
Austria
An Ideal Husband, directed by Michael Gampe, will be at the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna from 6th September.
|
Lord
Caversham |
Franz
Robert Wagner |
|
Lord Goring |
Michael
Dangl |
|
Sir Robert
Chiltern |
Peter
Scholz |
|
Vicomte de
Nanjac |
Peter
Moucka |
|
Mason |
Robert
Grass |
|
Phipps |
Gideon
Singer |
|
Lady Chiltern |
Sandra
Cervik |
|
Lady Markby |
Marianne
Nentwich / Gudrun Velisek |
|
Lady
Basildon |
Susanna
Wiegand |
|
Mrs
Marchmont |
Barbara
Sotelsek |
|
Miss Mabel
Chiltern |
Maria
Köstlinger |
|
Mrs
Cheveley |
Petra
Morzé |
|
Duchess of Maryborough |
Monika Tajmar |
|
John |
Heinz Horvath |
|
Tommy
Trafford |
Heinz
Arthur Boltuch |
|
Sets |
Rolf
Langenfass |
|
Costumes |
Erika Navas & Alexandra Weisz |
Canada
The Importance Of Being Earnest, directed by Susan Ferley, is at the Globe Theatre, Regina, Canada, 26th September to 10th October.
England
Patience is being produced by the Cambridge University Gilbert & Sullivan Society at the Minack Theatre, Porthcurno, Penzance, Cornwall 10th to 14th September.
Germany
Salome will be performed at the Staatsoper, Dresden, on the 3rd September, conducted by Wolfgang Rennert.
Roumania
Salome is also being produced performed in Bucharest on the 24th September at the Sala Palatului. This a Vienna State Opera production, conducted by Seiji Ozawa.
|
|
Dresden |
Bucharest |
|
Herod |
Robert Wörle |
Michael Roider |
|
Herodias |
Kerstin Witt |
Nelly Boschkowa |
|
Salome |
Evelyn Herlitzius |
Eliane Coelho |
|
Jochanaan |
Jukka Rasilainen |
Peter Weber |
Switzerland
The Importance of being Earnest is being produced in Swiss-German as Ärnscht Mues Me Syy at
the Theater Fauteuil in Basel from 20th September with Peter Richner, Renato
Salvi, Colette Studer, Claudia Federspiel, Colette Greder, Alice Farion, Urs
Bosshar.
- and for the record:
Zemlinksy’s The Birthday of the Infanta (Der Zwerg) was produced at the Teatro Regio, Turin, 19th May to 10th June.
The Canterville Ghost was broadcast on U.S. National Public Radio on 3rd and 10th July in the series Generations Radio Theater.
An Ideal Husband was produced by the Southside Players, London, 30th May to 2nd June.
The Importance of Being Earnest, directed by Linda Ellinwood, was produced at the Alameda Little Theatre, 1409 High Street, Alameda, California, 29th June to 28th July.
The Importance of Being Earnest was also produced by The Actors Studio, Kuala Lumpur, translated into Bahasa Melayu by Al-Jafri, directed by Adlin Aman Ramlie. The story unfolds with Razak creating an alter-ego ‘Rahmat’, his notorious brother, in order to attract Rose, his love interest. Then, comes along Azman, to avoid family obligations, also creates an alter-ego ‘Benjamin’, a sickly friend. Both know of each other’s secret identities and the situation becomes chaotic when Azman visits Razak in Penang, pretending to be Rahmat. The cast were Que Haidar, Ismadi Wahiri, Sylvia Too, Wan Shayna, Md. Eyzendy Aziz, Melissa Saila and Reza Zainal Abidin. The dates were 27th and 28th July, 31st July to 4th August.
We are grateful to Richard Harding Gardner for kindly drawing our attention to this.
The Picture of Dorian Gray, directed by Yvonne Karsmakers, was at the Theater de Lieve Vrouw in Amersfoort (18th School Theatre & Dance Festival) on the 22nd June. This was a radical reworking as The Photograph of Dorian Gray (De Foto van Dorian Gray) by Mevr. Karsmakers, where the play opens disclosing Dido Hallward and Henriette Wotton.
With the kind assistance of Claudia Letat of the ‘Oscar Wilde - Ode an ein Genie’ website (see below under Web Foot Notes) and Karen Rappaport of the Alan Bates Archive (http://www.ffolio.com/), we can untangle some misinformation that has crept into the records. According to the theatre listings http://www.whatsonstage.com/ Alan Bates was to appear in a version of The Picture of Dorian Gray at the Playhouse, Oxford, 21st August to 25th August 2001, directed and designed by Philip Prowse. Although such a production, to tour and then to be staged at the Old Vic, was discussed last spring, this did not in fact come to fruition. What has occurred is a production directed by Robin Phillips, designer Paul Farnsworth, original music by Philip Adams that was billed as ‘a new play by Trevor Baxter based on the novel by Oscar Wilde’. Mr Baxter thus joins a long line of writers who have made a play from the novel.
This production was at the Theatre Royal, Windsor (17th to 28th July) and the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford (31st July to 11th August); but the tour to the Oxford Playhouse was cancelled and at time of writing no London production is planned. This also modifies the report that was in The London Theatre Guide for the 9th July (http://www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk/news/index.cfm but removed since, that ‘The show, adapted by Trevor Baxter and directed by Robin Phillips, is currently on tour and is expected to open on August 29t. The venue is to be confirmed’. Moreover, Ms Rappaport points out that ‘the play in question is not an adaptation’, but, as the quotation above suggests, a substantially new work.
Claudia Letat has also drawn our attention to a programme of Wilde broadcasts on BBC Knowledge, on the 28th July. This seems to have passed totally unnoticed by those who monitor such things on the discussion groups (and even by the archive on the BBC Knowledge webpages), so much so that we asked The Radio Times to confirm it, which David Hodges of Radio Times Reader Services has kindly done. The programme was billed as ‘Oscar Wilde: A series of four programmes celebrating the life and work of the writer’ and appeared as follows
6.00. Two Loves. A portrait of Oscar Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas better known as Bosie.
7.00 Oscar Wilde - Omnibus. The writer’s legacy explored.
7.50 Corin Redgrave: De Profundis, A personal account of Oscar Wilde’s social and political ideas.
8.00 Wilde at Heart. Poet Tom Paulin examines Oscar Wilde’s social and political ideas.
Lowell Liebermann’s opera The Picture of Dorian Gray was given by the Florentine Opera Company in Milwaukee on 11th August, with Stewart Bedford (conductor); Mark Thomsen (Dorian Gray); Erie Mills (Sibyl Vane); Kelly Anderson (Basil); John Hancock (Lord Henry); Nancy Shade (The Whore); Kristopher Irmiter (James); Brandon Jovanovich (Lord Geoffrey); Matthew Potterton (Gamekeeper).
The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Salome on 4th August at Tanglewood, Lenox, Massachusetts, mentioned in THE OSCHOLARS I/3, was conducted by Seiji Ozawa.
|
Salome |
Deborah Voigt |
|
Herodias |
Jane Henschel |
|
Page |
Katarina Karnéus |
|
Herod |
Siegfried Jerusalem |
|
Narraboth |
Christopher Ventris |
|
Jochanaan |
Falk Struckmann |
· Contributions
to this section of THE OSCHOLARS from anywhere in the world will be very welcome indeed.
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VI. WEB FOOT NOTES
A monthly look at websites (contributions welcome).
Eva Thienpont writes ‘Our website "Mr O.W." [recommended in THE OSCHOLARS I/3] is currently being restyled, and we will be moving it as well. Mr O.W.’s new address is the following:
http://users.belgacom.net/wilde
Up till now, the site could be reached at two different servers, but soon the above one will be the only address.’
http://webtext.library.yale.edu/sgml2html/beinecke.wilde.sgm.html is a guide to the twenty-eight Wilde items held in the Yale University Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
http://www.besuche-oscar-wilde.de/ is the website of Oscar Wilde - Ode an ein Genie, devised by Claudia Letat in Victorian sepia. This is perhaps the most ambitious of the sites reviewed so far, with many items that can be downloaded to one’s own computer, a set of e-cards (including the notorious Alice Gusalewicz Salome), and a filmography. There is also a news column. This site is in German, an English version being undertaken.
http://communities.msn.it/IlsitodiDorian&naventryid=100 is the website of Dorian’s World, composed by a young woman with the name Silvia Dorian. Access to much of it is password guarded, but it contains poems by Wilde and Douglas, pictures of Wilde (and of herself) and an introduction (in Italian) by Ms Dorian about her love of Wilde. This was founded in October 2000, but we appear to be the only member. She has also founded yet another message forum, called Oscar Wilde’s World. Launched in December 2000, it has at time of writing 43 members, some of whom seem a little strange, and 67 messages posted. [http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/oscarwildesworld?s]
http://www.oddbooks.co.uk/harris/ is a Frank Harris site kept by Alfred Armstrong, with biographical and bibliographical material, links to other Harris sites, and links to sites for Wilde, Shaw, Lord Alfred Douglas and others who connected with Harris at various times; as well as a discussion forum. A well thought out, dignified site.
Graphic courtesy of Alfred Armstrong
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VII. SOME SELL AND OTHERS BUY
Mark Samuels Lasner writes ‘On 27th June Sotheby’s in New York offered some remarkable Wilde material. Included were The Ballad of Reading Gaol inscribed by Oscar to Max Beerbohm (purchased by an American private collector); a copy of The Sphinx (one of the 25 large paper copies - mistakenly described as the ordinary issue in the catalogue, bought by a bookseller for $12,000), and Constance Wilde’s "autograph book," containing the MS of Oscar’s poem which was published as "To my Wife with a a Copy of My Poems" and an aphorism, signed by many notables, among them Mark Twain, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Walter Pater, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. This last, notable for its association and contents, was, sadly, no longer in its original nineteenth century binding (and had lost much of its appeal), hence it brought only $26,000, just above the lowest estimate. Full, if somewhat inaccurate, descriptions of these items can be found on Sotheby’s website, http://www.sothebys.com/
Books in print mentioned in THE OSCHOLARS can be ordered from:
John Wyse Jackson at Sandoe Books books@jsandoe.demon.co.uk
v John Wyse Jackson is editor of Aristotle at Afternoon Tea: The Rare Oscar Wilde. London: Fourth Estate 1991; paperback edition retitled Uncollected Oscar Wilde 1995.
Oscar Wilde Buchhandlung und Versand at Alte Gasse 51, 60313 Frankfurt Tel.:069/28 12 60 Fax:069/297 75 42. Contact Harald.
Internet: http://www.oscar-wilde.de/ e-mail: shop@oscar-wilde.de
Dorian Bookstore, 802 Elm at Madison, Youngstown, Ohio 44505-2843. Contact Jack Peterson.
Internet: http://alt.youngstown.org/dorian.ht; e-mail: dorianbooks@cboss.com.
The Oscar Wilde Book Shop, 15 Christopher Street, New York, NY 10014. wildebooks@aol.com
Ebay is an online auction house where many Wilde items are offered, from second-hand paperbacks to playbills to limited editions. We have set up this link which should take you straight to ebay’s Wilde pages:
This rather interesting looking 1910 edition of The Ballad of Reading Gaol was recently offered:
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VIII. A WILDE SEPTEMBER
September birthdays of those whose lives touch Wilde’s include Victorien Sardou on the 5th (1831), Tristan Bernard on the 7th (1866), Alfred Jarry on the 8th and Max Reinhardt on the 9th (1873), Charles Hawtrey on the 21st (1858), Charles Robert Maturin on the 25th (1790) and Florent Schmitt on the 28th (1870).
September deaths include those of Turgenev on the 3rd (1883), the salonnière Madame Aubernon de Nerville on the 7th (1899), S. Bing on the 6th (1905), Richard Strauss on the 8th (1949), Émile Goudeau on the 17th (1906), Ida Rubinstein on the 20th (1960), Jules Chéret on the 23rd (1932), Edgar Degas and Philippe Jullian on the 27th (1917 and 1977) and Zola on the 29th (1902).
The centenary of the death of Toulouse-Lautrec on the 9th is worth noting. Readers are referred to Gordon Blackwell: ‘Toulouse-Lautrec and Oscar Wilde’. Wild about Wilde Newsletter Number 12. Mount Airy, Maryland. May 1992.
Anyone who might be visiting Père Lachaise could look for the grave of Adelina Patti, who died on the 27th September 1919. There were two other deaths in September, but we have not established the exact day: Marie Prescott, Wilde’s Vera (1893) (it must be added that Hart-Davis and Holland give Prescott’s dates as 1853-1923); and the editor of Gil Blas, who chanced to be called Victor Wilder (1892).
Here is a Wilde Chronology for the month (additions and corrections welcome, of course). I have omitted the American lecture tour.
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26 |
09 |
1852 |
Birth of William Charles Kingsbury Wilde (Willie). |
|
17 |
09 |
1874 |
Wilde matriculates at Oxford. |
|
|
09 |
1878 |
Publication of Augustus Moore’s ‘To Oscar Wilde, author of Ravenna’ in ‘The Irish Monthly’. |
|
|
09 |
1880 |
Wilde’s ‘Vera’ published by Ranken & Co. |
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25 |
09 |
1880 |
Wilde’s ‘Pan, A Villanelle’ published in ‘Pan’. |
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30 |
09 |
1881 |
Wilde receives telegram from Colonel Morse suggesting the U.S. lecture tour. |
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24 |
09 |
1883 |
Wilde begins lecture tour in England, lasting on and off all year. |
|
13 |
09 |
1886 |
Publication of Wilde’s ‘Balzac in English’ in ‘The Pall Mall Gazette’. |
|
14 |
09 |
1886 |
Wilde meets Bernard Shaw at J.F. Molloy’s house, Red Lion Square, London. |
|
20 |
09 |
1886 |
Publication of Wilde’s ‘Ben Jonson’ in ‘The Pall Mall Gazette’. |
|
27 |
09 |
1887 |
Publication of Wilde’s ‘Two Biographies of Keats’ in ‘The Pall Mall Gazette’. |
|
|
09 |
1888 |
Yeats meets Wilde at the house of W.E. Henley. |
|
27 |
09 |
1889 |
Wilde attends Wilkie Collins’ funeral. |
|
|
09 |
1892 |
Wilde at a house party given by Mrs Walter Palmer. |
|
20 |
09 |
1893 |
First night of Henry Arthur Jones’ ‘The Tempter’, but Wilde at the Alhambra with Lord Alfred Douglas. |
|
|
09 |
1894 |
Wilde finishes ‘The Importance of being Earnest’. |
|
|
09 |
1895 |
Constance Wilde moves to Sori, near Bogliasco. |
|
21 |
09 |
1895 |
Constance Wilde visits Wilde in Wandsworth. |
|
24 |
09 |
1895 |
Wilde’s first examination in bankruptcy. |
|
|
09 |
1897 |
Wilde interviewed in Dieppe by Gideon Spilett for ‘Gil Blas’. |
|
|
09 |
1897 |
Wilde has suggested that Dowson should translate Louÿs’ ‘Aphrodite’. |
|
04 |
09 |
1897 |
Wilde spends a week with Lord Alfred Douglas in Rouen (till the 11th); Douglas is staying at the Hôtel de la Poste. |
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15 |
09 |
1897 |
Wilde in Rouen. |
|
20 |
09 |
1897 |
Wilde leaves Dieppe for Paris, staying in a hotel in the rue de Helder. |
|
25 c |
09 |
1897 |
Wilde arrives at Naples and stays with Douglas at the Hôtel Royal des Etrangers. |
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27 |
09 |
1897 |
Wilde stays at the Villa Giudice, Posillipo [37 via Posillipo]. |
|
|
09 |
1899 |
Wilde meets Laurence Housman with Robbie Ross and Henri Davray. |
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08 |
09 |
1900 |
George Ives sends Wilde £5/-/-. |
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09 |
09 |
1904 |
Stuart Mason finishes his translation of André Gide: ‘Oscar Wilde, A Study from the French’. Oxford: Holywell Press 1905. |
|
29 |
09 |
1991 |
First meeting of the Irish Oscar Wilde Society, Bewley’s Café, Dublin. |
|
16 - 18 |
09 |
1994 |
First Oscar Wilde Autumn School held in Bray, Co Wicklow. |
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IX. THE OSCAR WILDE SOCIETY AND THE WILDEAN
THE OSCHOLARS continues its association with The Oscar Wilde Society and its journal The Wildean. Contacts for both the Society and The Wildean are given below.
The Oscar Wilde Society is a literary society devoted to the congenial appreciation of Oscar Wilde. It is a non-profit making organisation which aims to promote knowledge, appreciation and study of Wilde’s life, personality and works. It organises lectures, readings and discussions, visits to places in Great Britain and overseas associated with Wilde, an annual lunch in Oxford, and an annual Birthday Dinner at the Cadogan Hotel, London. New members are very welcome. The current annual individual subscription (UK) is £14 and household membership £20.
A newsletter - Intentions - is published about six times a year and gives information on forthcoming events, performances and publications, and reports on Society activities. The Society’s journal - The Wildean - is published twice a year and contains features on a variety of subjects relating to Wilde, including articles, reviews, and accounts of Society events. It is a publication of permanent interest (MLA listed and indexed) and copies of all recent back issues are available at cover price, which includes postage in the UK.
THE OSCHOLARS publishes the Table of Contents for each new issue of The Wildean. When there is no new issue, Tables of Contents from earlier issues will be published until the whole set has been detailed.
Here is the information from the Editor of The Wildean about the latest issue -- No.19 (July 2001):
Terry Eagleton writes of the doubleness of Oscar Wilde. ‘He was socialite and sodomite, victor and victim, upper-class and underdog, a darling of English high society whose enchanting fables for children are almost all secret revolutionary tracts. There are almost as many Oscars as you’d find at a Hollywood awards ceremony, not all of them mutually compatible . . .’
Thomas Wright, in his article on ‘Wilde, the Talker as Artist’, examines the content and stylistic characteristics of Wilde’s spoken tales, reviews the history of criticism of the stories, and discusses their significance in the wider context of Wilde’s life and work. His review of James Nelson’s book Publisher to the Decadents is actually a wide-ranging essay on the subject of Leonard Smithers. His book Table Talk: Oscar Wilde is also reviewed in this issue.
In her article on ‘Homoeroticism and the Child in Wilde’s Fairy Tales’, Angela Kingston demonstrates that whilst many homoerotic interpretations of Wilde’s fairy tales are fascinating, the common critical preconception that his fairy tale protagonists are ‘clearly’ male lovers is both extravagant and dubious.
Robert Whelan in ‘Are Catholics Decadent or are Decadents Catholic?’ asks whether Oscar Wilde’s deathbed conversion was sincere or not, and considers the attraction of the Catholic Church for decadents; Peter Vernier, whose articles over the years in The Wildean have included detailed commentaries on the ‘Mental Photograph’ questionnaire, here gives an authoritative account of Oscar at Magdalen College; Jean Graham Hall considers the three trials of Oscar Wilde and subsequent legislation; Anya Clayworth reviews three major publications by or involving Ian Small.
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Articles |
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The Doubleness of Oscar Wilde. |
Terry Eagleton |
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The Talker as Artist: The Spoken Stories of Oscar Wilde. |
Thomas Wright |
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Are Catholics Decadent Or Are Decadents Catholic? |
Robert Whelan |
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Oscar at Magdalen. |
Peter Vernier |
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In Memoriam: Andrew McDonnell. |
Anne Clark Amor |
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Oscar Wilde - The Tragedy of Being Earnest: Some Legal Aspects. |
Jean Graham
Hall |
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Homoeroticism and the Child in Wilde’s Fairy Tales. |
Angela Kingston |
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Oscar Wilde’s Terminal Illness. |
Ashley R. Robins |
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Reviews |
|
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Publisher to the Decadents by James Nelson (or, to quote the title page in full: Publisher to the Decadents. Leonard Smithers in the Careers ofBeardsley, Wilde, Dowson. With an Appendix on Smithers and the Erotic Book Trade by Peter Mendes and a checklist of Smithers’s Publications by James G. Nelson and Peter Mendes. |
Thomas Wright |
|
‘Of Making Many Books’: Ian Small on Wilde Reviews of Ian Small: Oscar Wilde: Recent Research, A Supplement to ‘Oscar Wilde Revalued; Josephine M. Guy and Ian Small, Oscar Wilde’s Profession: Writing and the Culture Industry in the Late Nineteenth Century; Bobby Fong and Karl Beckson, editors, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (General Editors: Russell Jackson and Ian Small), Volume 1: Poems and Poems in Prose. |
Anya Clayworth |
|
Table Talk: Oscar Wilde by Thomas Wright. Review of the book edited by Thomas Wright with foreword by Peter Ackroyd, and of the audio book read by Tom Baker, edited by Thomas Wright. |
Donald Mead |
Details of membership of the Society may be obtained from Vanessa Harris, the Hon. Secretary (see below).
Previous issues of The Wildean are still available at cover price - details from Donald Mead (see below).
|
The Oscar Wilde Society may be contacted by writing to the Hon. Secretary, Vanessa Harris 100 Peacock Street, Gravesend, Kent DA12 1EQ, England e-mail: vanessa@salome.co.uk The Wildean may be contacted by writing to its Editor, Donald Mead 63 Lambton Road, London SW20 0LW England e-mail: donmead@wildean.demon.co.uk |
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