An Electronic Journal for the Exchange of Information

on Current Research, Publications and Productions

concerning

Oscar Wilde and His Worlds

Vol. IV No. 3

Issue number 34 : March 2007

Stained glass window at the Church of St Helen’s, Witton, situated in the centre of Northwich (England), showing scenes from The Selfish Giant.

The window was designed by children from Church Walk school and constructed by Lightfoots of Manchester.

Navigating THE OSCHOLARS

Clicking takes you to the Table of Contents; clicking takes you to the hub page for our website; clicking takes you to the home page of THE OSCHOLARS.

The sunflower navigates to other pages of this issue.

We do not usually publish e-mail addresses in full but the sign @ will bring up an e-mail form. This replaces our earlier sign , with which we were never satisfied.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Click on any entry for direct access
I. The Editorial team	continued from col. 1
II. News from The Editor	IX. NOTES AND QUERIES
III. GUIDANCE FOR SUBMISSIONS	1. Oscar Wilde and Brendan Behan
IV. NEWS FROM READERS	2. Oscar Wilde at Oxford
1. Ellmann and after: A proposal	3. Finding publication details
2. Lord Alfred Douglas	4. Oscar Wilde and the Kinematograph
3. Ferdinand Khnopff	5. Wilde on the Curriculum
4. George Moore	6. Drinking with Oscar
5. Literary London	7. Whistler
6. The London Adventure	8. A Wilde Collection
V. THE CRITIC AS CRITIC: Reviews	9. Oscar Wilde and Thomas Moore
VI. PUBLICATIONS & PAPERS	10. A Source for the Canterville Ghost?
VII. NEWS FROM ELSEWHERE	11. Oscar in Popular Culture
1. Wilde at Harvard	X. ‘Mad, Scarlet Music’
2. The Viennese Café	XI. GOING WILDE: Productions
3. Reading and Literary Discussion Groups	XII. SHAVINGS
4. Exhibitions	XIII. WEB FOOT NOTES
5. Society News	XIV. SOME SELL AND OTHERS BUY
6. Conferences, Seminars, Lectures	XV. THE WILDE CALENDAR & CHRONOLOGY
7. Dublin Gay Theatre Festival	XVI. BIBLIOGRAPHY: J.P. Wearing
8. Museums & Galeries: Threats & Promises	XVII. AND I? MAY I SAY NOTHING?
9. The British Cemetery, Florence	XVIII. NEVER SPEAKING DISRESPECTFULLY: THE OSCAR WILDE SOCIETIES & ASSOCIATIONS
10. The Victorian Newsletter	1. The Oscar Wilde Society
11. Work in Progress	2. The Société Oscar Wilde
12. Awards	3. The Oscar Wilde Society of America
VIII. BEING TALKED ABOUT: CALLS FOR PAPERS	4. Project Oscar Wilde
To top of column 2	5. The Oscar Wilde Society of Japan

1. THE EDITORIAL TEAM

Editor:

D.C. Rose

M.A. (Oxon), Dip. Arts Admin. (NUI)

late of the

Department of English

Goldsmiths College

University of London

Associate Editor for Australasia

Angela Kingston

formerly of the

Department of English
Adelaide University

Redactrice pour la France

(Affaires culturelles) /

Associate Editor for France

(Cultural Affairs)

Danielle Guérin

Redakteurin fur Österreich

und deutsche Schweiz /

Associate Editor for Austria and German Switzerland:

Sandra Mayer

Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Universität Wien, Österreich

Redacteur voor België en Nederland/

Associate Editor for Belgium and The Netherlands:

Eva Thienpont

Vakgroep Engelse Literatuur

Universiteit Gent

België/Belgique/Belgien

Redakteurin fur Deutschland /

Associate Editor for Germany:

Lucia Krämer

Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Universität Regensburg, Deutschland

Associate Editor for Ireland:

Maureen O’Connor

Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences Government of Ireland Post-Doctoral Fellow, Moore Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway

Associate Editor for China, Taiwan

and Singapore:

Linda Piu-Ling Wong

Department of English

Hong Kong Baptist University

Kowloon Tong

Hong Kong

Associate Editor for India:

Gulshan Taneja

Department of English

Ram Lal Anand College

University of Delhi

Associate Editors for Italy:

Elisa Bizzotto

Università di Trento

Rita Severi

Università di Verona

Associate Editor (Music):

Tine Englebert

Rijksuniversiteit Gent

België/Belgique/Belgien

Associate Editors (Theatre):

Michelle Paull (England) Tiffany Perala (USA)

St Mary’s University College Marylhurst University

Twickenham, Middlesex Portland, Oregon

@ @

Associate Editor (Conferences)

Florina Tufescu

Dalarna University College,

Sweden

Associate Editor: The Sibyl *

Sophie Geoffroy

Université de la Réunion

Associate Editor: Moorings **

Mark Llewellyn

University of Liverpool

Associate Editor, Shavings

Barbara Pfeifer

University of Vienna

Associate Editor, NOCTURNE

Elaine Saniter

University of Glasgow

Associate Editor for the Richard Ellmann Special Supplement

Michèle Mendelssohn

University of Edinburgh

Webmaster and Publisher

Steven Halliwell

The Rivendale Press

* New quarterly supplement on Vernon Lee, of which the first issue is now on our website.

** New quarterly supplement in advanced preparation on George Moore.

2. News from the Editor

This is the second issue of THE OSCHOLARS to be published on our new website, provided and constructed by Steven Halliwell of The Rivendale Press, a publishing house with a special interest in the fin-de-siècle. This when complete will house all our publications as a fully navigable, searchable and sophisticated website. Mr Halliwell joins Dr John Phelps of Goldsmiths College, University of London, and Mr Patrick O’Sullivan of the Irish Diaspora Net as one of the godfathers without whom THE OSCHOLARS could not have appeared on the web in any useful form.

Much has now been transferred to the new site, although it has been this work that has delayed the publication of this issue of THE OSCHOLARS. We will continue to get as much up as quickly as possible.

Our quarterly supplement devoted to Vernon Lee (The Sibyl), under the editorship of Sophie Geoffroy (Université de la Réunion) is now fairly launched; and preparations continue for Moorings, a supplement devoted to George Moore and his circle, edited by Mark Llewellyn of the University of Liverpool. All issues of our French language sister publication rue des beaux-arts, edited by our Associate Editor for French Cultural Affairs Danielle Guérin, are now posted at www.oscholars.com and all future issues will appear there.

The first two of our planned special, once-off, supplements, are in train. One of these will be to mark next October the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Richard Ellmann’s Oscar Wilde; the guest editor for this is Dr Michèle Mendelssohn of the University of Edinburgh. @

The other supplement is on Teleny. We believe it is high time that scholarship on Teleny is brought together and the arguments about it properly marshalled. This will be edited by Professor John McRae of the University of Nottingham, whose edition of Teleny was the first scholarly unexpurgated one published. Readers who would like to submit an article discussing any aspect of Teleny should contact Professor McRae, in the first instance outlining their approach; but we are slowing down our planning for this as we need to absorb all the other developments. @

What will probably be our final innovation until all has bedded down is the recreation of a correspondence page. Your editors have discussed at length the form that this should take: our old JISCmail service never functioned fully. We considered trying to revive it, or creating a listserv as H-Fin-de-siècle, or a blog. While none of these are ruled out for the future, it was eventually decided to set up a 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.

The forum was set up for us and intitially moderated by Colleen Platt, a committed Wildëan and experienced moderator. Unfortunatley pressure of other commitments has led her to step down form the position of moderator, although we hope she will take this up again in the future. The task is taken up by Dr Mark Llewellyn and myself. Our model is VICTORIA, and we hope to stimulate the same sort of scholarly discussion, although with a different emphasis encompassing all the concerns of our journals, and the fin-de-siècle in its broader aspect internationally. It will also be a very convenient way of making announcements that fall between issues of THE OSCHOLARS, or to herald the arrival of the new issues. As only subscribers to THE OSCHOLARS and its sister publications will able to contribute, we hope for some serious debate.

We do urge all our readers to sign up for this, even if only to ensure they get regular news by this means. All (including the rules for submission) can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/oscholarship. There is a short registration process, as there is for all such groups and lists. If you set your preferences either to digest or to individual e-mails, this will overcome one problem for us, for at the moment sending e-mails to all our subscribers is a very long business, with so many mailboxes not accepting mass mailings. We will sprinkle its link here and there in our pages, where we think readers may (or should be) prompted to express a view. The icon is .

One more and very welcome announcement: our Editorial team has been joined by Dr Cristina Pascual Aransáez of the University of La Rioja, the leading Wilde scholar in Spain. She has endorsed with great conviction the aims and aspirations of THE OSCHOLARS and will be a regular contributor on Wilde matters south of the Pyranees. She has already kindly given us permission to republish an article by her on Wilde and Anatole France and this will be found in our Library, reached by clicking its icon.

This increase in our team has suggested a further change: in future instead of listing the team each month on this page, a permanent page will be created on the site with a link from our hub page. This will enable us to give more room to each Associate Editor, with some biographical and bibliographical details.

Information that falls within the spheres of influence of each of our Associate Editors (news of publications, papers, conferences, productions, and requests for review copies etc) should be sent to the appropriate AE for processing and onward transmission to the Editor. The work of the AEs in undertaking this, as well as in obtaining new readers for THE OSCHOLARS is invaluable, and the compliments that are quite often directed to the Editor are properly theirs as well as his.

THE OSCHOLARS is therefore developing well along the lines previously laid down. Its international scope is being extended and its reviews section will be much enlarged. Oscar Wilde will always at the centre of our concerns, of course, but by covering in greater depth the epoch we call the fin-de-siècle, we reveal Wilde’s essential stage setting and, we hope, augment his place within it.

THE OSCHOLARS has hitherto been composed in Bookman Old Style, chiefly 10 point. If you do not have this font, you will view the journal in your standard default font. It has been suggested that Bookman O.S. is not a good font for internet use and that 10 point is too small. As an experiment we shifted to a standard of 11 point, but this was not thought superior. On this, as on all other matters, we seek the opinion of our readers. If you are using Internet Explorer as your browser, you can adjust by using the text size command in the View menu. The same is true for Firefox and it may be the same for Netscape.

THE OSCHOLARS LIBRARY

· In July 2003, to celebrate our entry into our third year, we decided to offer readers who have published articles on Wilde in anthologies or journals that are not readily accessible outside university libraries (and not always then) the opportunity to republish them (amended if desired) on THE OSCHOLARS website. This offer is also extended to abstracts or précis of unpublished doctoral theses. In either case, these must come as e-mail attachments formatted in Word or on diskette. In the former case, the name of the anthology or journal, its volume and number, editor, place and date of publication, and indication of revisions if any must be given; in the case of the latter, the date of the doctoral award, the university, and the name of the supervisor must be given. This is a development of our republishing short pieces in 'And I? May I Say Nothing?'

· Should the author so wish, access to the article or thesis can be by password only, provided by the author at the request of the intending reader. In this case, the author can decide whether she or he will charge for the password before giving it. If such a charge is made, we will look for a commission of 10%. Otherwise, we will maintain freedom of access.

· All work so published will remain copyright to the author.

· We also intend republishing articles on Wilde, made obsolete by the march of scholarship, that may still have some value in charting how he was viewed by earlier writers.

· Such articles 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. Transfer of these articles is not yet complete.

Newly posted to LIBRARY:

Charles Nickerson: Vivian Grey and Dorian Gray.

Cristina Pascual Aransáez: A Comparative Study of Two Extreme Versions of Subjectivist Criticism: Oscar Wilde’s Intentions and Anatole France’s La Vie Littéraire.

THE OSCHOLARS APPENDICES.

It is now possible to view on their own pages a number of Tables and material gathered from different issues of THE OSCHOLARS in Appendices. A guide to these is below, or click here to go its cover page. The Appendices are:

a. The Amalgamated Table of Contents for The Wildean.

b. The Wilde Calendar and the Wilde Chronology.

c. In Table form, a list of all the books and plays and exhibitions that we have reviewed, together with a list of the essays that have appeared in 'And I? May I Say Nothing?'. To reach it, click wherever you see this icon

d. All the material published in the monthly section 'Web Foot Notes' has now been brought together one page called 'Trafficking in Strange Webs'. Monthly reviews will continue as before and these will be added to the total. To see this page, click

e. Our Poster Wall of film posters, gathered from the section ‘Oscar Wilde and the Kinematograph’, is to be found in its own similar folder. Click its icon to reach its Contents page.

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 melmoth@aliceadsl.fr. Underlined text in blue can be clicked for navigation through the document or to other addresses.

We are pleased to record that since our relaunch in October 2006 we have gained 78 new readers and recovered some whose addresses had been lost. We hope this will continue, and we ask readers to recruit colleagues: the large readership increases our influence with publishers in obtaining book for review, and of course rewarding our contributors with the knowledge that their words are read. If we recovered all our missing readers we would have a subscription list of about 1500.

3. GUIDANCE FOR SUBMISSIONS & CORRESPONDENCE

Rather than repeat this each month, as was our former practice, we have posted the Guidance for Submissions and Correspondence on it own page where it can be consulted by clicking here.

4. FREQUENTING THE SOCIETY OF THE AGED AND WELL-INFORMED: NEWS FROM READERS

1. Ellmann and After: A proposal

We wrote in our leading article of our plans to issue a special supplement to mark the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Richard Ellmann’s Oscar Wilde. This will have the general theme of ‘Richard Ellmann: Revalued / Re-evaluated’. Trevor Fisher writes

5th October 2007 will see the 20th anniversary of the publication of Richard Ellmann’s biography Oscar Wilde. This has become the definitive statement for the current era. Although the book has drawn criticism, its magisterial quality and voluminous research have given it the pre-eminent role in Wilde studies since its appearance. Few biographies in the late twentieth century received so overwhelmingly favourable a reception. The views of Claire Tomalin that this was ‘a near perfect biography’ and Anthony Burgess summing this up as ‘A Great Book’ were typical. The book established a reputation which has grown over the last two decades.

The book summed up a paradigm which had been emerging since the early 1960s, the view of Wilde as victim, and established this theme as the framework within which Wilde studies has developed thereafter. Criticism and alternative versions of Wilde’s career have made little impression on the dominance of Ellmann’s interpretations of Wilde’s life and downfall. It became a major influence on popular views on Wilde through the film Wilde (1997) which was scripted by Julian Mitchell from Ellmann’s book.

Ellmann’s book has thus had a major academic and popular impact which is continuing. The predominant effect of the book has been to reinforce the view of Wilde as an iconic figure who was both a literary genius and a social victim – or as Wilde himself said of his future, ‘I shall now live as the Infamous St Oscar of Oxford, Poet and Martyr’ (1) Ellmann’s achievement was to encapsulate this image of Wilde for a generation (2)

The magisterial quality of the book ensured it would supplant more sceptical and critical views, and it has come to overshadow Hesketh Pearson’s 1946 work and the Richard Pine biographical sketch of 1983.

However two decades on, the qualities which made Ellmann’s book the definitive biography for its time demand reconsideration. Horst Schroeder has alleged there are a large number of factual errors (3), but these are less important than the perspective from which Ellmann approached his subject. He adopted a view of Wilde which ran the risk of special pleading. John Bayley reviewed the book approvingly, commenting that Ellmann ‘adores Wilde and such a love is the foundation of the best biography’. But if love is blind, is adoration not close to hagiography?

Despite the immense authority of the Ellmann biography, it’s impact needs critical consideration and the twentieth anniversary of its publication seems appropriate for such consideration. Apart from the book’s intrinsic interest for Wildeans, its reception and subsequent history raise wider cultural issues about the role of biography in a celebrity obsessed age. Ellmann was pre-eminently a scholar and his work evidence based. It remains the essential starting point for serious study of Wilde.

However the use of the book seems increasingly to be as a function of a celebrity obsessed and gossip relating age to produce images which are increasingly unrealistic. What price biography in the Age of Reality TV? (4) Both the work itself and its cultural role need scrutiny. Ellmann essayed a sympathetic reading of his subject, but this has taken on a life of its own.

I am suggesting a day school be organised in October 2007 to consider such a scrutiny. Clearly this will need a body of opinion in support, from the widest possible spectrum of expertise, and considerable planning.

This note is to test whether there is sufficient support for such a project to be undertaken. I would like to gauge whether enough support exists, and would ask anyone interested in supporting such a project in principle to contact me, without commitment, to discuss how the project might be carried forward.

My email is @ and I will respond to any reasonable suggestions in response to this proposal.

(Trevor Fisher is the author of Oscar And Bosie; A Fatal Passion, Sutton 2002. His recently published pamphlet on the Wilde Phenomenon, Oscar Wilde; The Legacy: Essays on critical issues of Wilde Studies: can be obtained from Outlook Services, PO Box 2028, Stafford ST16 3WA, price £3. Cheques should be made out to Trevor Fisher.)

(1) Complete Letters 2000 p.1041, letter of 18th March 1898

(2) The key phrase was used, without quotes, on the front cover of the Times Literary Supplement of 9th February 2001, as the main headline.

(3) Horst Schroeder: Additions and Corrections to Richard Ellmann’s Oscar Wilde, Braunschweig 2002.

(4) The actor Rupert Everett was quoted in the Wilde Society newsletter Intentions (December 2006) as wanting to make a film of the last years of Wilde because ‘He was the last of the great vagabonds – this syphilitic hobbling man who sat drunk in the corners of nightclubs – I can identify with that’ (p.15) This caricature of Wilde’s last years owes something to Ellmann, particularly the syphilis.

a. Editor’s note: Richard Pine’s ‘biographical sketch’ mentioned above refers to his Oscar Wilde in the Gill & Macmillan ‘Irish Lives’ series (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1983; re-issued with revisions 1997), and not to his far more substantial The Thief of Reason: Oscar Wilde and Modern Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1995).

2. Lord Alfred Douglas

Caspar Wintermans informs us of the publication of his Lord Alfred Douglas: A Poet's Life and His Finest Work by Peter Owen Ltd with a launch party in London on 29th March.

3. Ferdinand Khnopff

Isa Bickmann writes that her article on the Khnopff exhibition in Salzburg is finally published in Zeitschrift Für Kunstgeschichte, No. 2, 2007.

4. George Moore in Lille and Hull

Ann Heilmann (University of Hull), Fabienne Dabrigeon-Garcier (Université Lille 3), Bernard Escarbelt (Université Lille 3), Christine Huguet (Université Lille 3), Alain Labau (Université de Caen), and Mary Pierse (University College Cork) were responsible for arranging a George Moore Conference at the Université de Lille Friday 30th and Saturday 31st March, titled « George Moore: le passage des frontières ». A report will appear in Moorings.

A follow up Conference in planned for Hull in 2008.

5. Literary London

Lawrence Phillips (University of Northampton) draws our attention to the 2007 Literary London Conference, the 6th in the series, which will be hosted by the Department of English, University of Westminster, London, at their 309 Regent Street building. (http://www.wmin.ac.uk/page-42). Dr Phillips is the founder and director of this conference. The deadline for submissions has been extended to 31st March. The Call for Papers can be found in our section ‘Being Talked About’.

Click

6. The London Adventure

Nicolas Granger-Taylor sends us the following announcement.

THE LONDON ADVENTURE

EXPLORATIONS INTO HIDDEN LITERARY LONDON

All walks are free

After each walk there will be a collection for voluntary donations to

The London Adventure Children’s Fund

The information given here is correct at time of publication. For further information and updates on London Adventure walks and The London Adventure Children’s Fund, and to be on the mailing list, please visit the website: www.thelondonadventure.co.uk or contact Nicolas Granger-Taylor at the address below.

Nicolas Granger-Taylor, 35 Grafton Way, London W1T 5DB

Email: @

2007 CALENDAR OF WALKS

UPDATE

FIRST WALK OF THE YEAR

DION FORTUNE

Priestess of the Mysteries

Presented by Christina Oakley Harrington

Saturday 12th May 2007, 3pm

Your rendezvous with Dion Fortune commences at the entrance to Bayswater Underground Station. Look for a blonde lady of a certain age, holding a long black umbrella that signals Edwardian London, and join her on a tour of the London haunts of Dion Fortune (1890-1946), one of the most influential occultists and probably the most preeminent esoteric novelist of the 20th century.

Trained in Western kabbalistic occultism in a lodge of the Golden Dawn, Dion Fortune went on to found her own order, Servants of the Inner Light. She wrote novels which included Egyptian reincarnation, erotic rituals, Celtic mysticism, derring-do, psychic attacks, and instruction in the philosophy of We s.t.ern occultism.

The walk will last 2-3 hours, concluding at a local public house.

5. THE CRITIC AS CRITIC

Last month’s review section contained reviews by Maureen O’Connor of The Irish Scene in Somerville and Ross; by Marco Pustianaz of The Dedalus Book of Decadence; by Frederick Roden of Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature: An Introduction; by R.K.R. Thornton of Bound for the 1890s: Essays on Writing and Publishing in Honor of James G. Nelson; by Ruth Livesey of British Æstheticism and the Urban Working Classes; and by Laurence Talairach-Vielmas of Victorian Sensations: Essays on a Scandalous Genre ; while Katherine Maynard reviewed a recent production of Gross Indecency: the Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. These reviews may be found be clicking

This month we carry a review by Neil Sammells of David Haven Blake: Walt Whitman and the Culture of American Celebrity; by Grace Brockington of Talia Schaffer: Literature and Culture at the Fin de Siècle, to which Dr Schaffer has written a response.

These reviews may be found be clicking

Clicking will take you to the Table of Contents of all our reviews.

We welcome offers to review from readers.

6. PUBLICATIONS AND PAPERS

<< More than half of modern culture depends upon what one should not read >>

For a list of recent and forthcoming publications and papers (with abstracts of the latter when available), click

7. NEWS FROM ELSEWHERE

1. Wilde at Harvard

The Harvard University Libraries have launched a new digital collection, Studies in Scarlet: Marriage and Sexuality in the U.S. & U.K., 1815-1914.

Drawn from the Harvard Law School Library's extensive trial collections,Studies in Scarlet presents images of the texts of more than 450 separately published trial narratives printed in the United States or the United Kingdom from 1815 until 1914. Especially valuable as sources for women's studies, the cases involve not only trials for divorce, domestic violence, adultery, bigamy, breach of promise to marry, and the custody of children but also those for murder and rape. Featured are trials concerning the wealthy and the renowned, such as Caroline, Queen Consort of George IV; Oscar Wilde; and Harry Thaw, who murdered the architect (and alleged seducer) Stanford White. The larger part of the collection, however, consists of the stories of ordinary men and women thrust into the public eye when their marriages and love affairs went wrong, or their relationships did not conform to social standards.

The collection may be viewed at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.eresource:sscarlet

2. The Viennese Café and Fin-de-siècle Culture Research Project

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in England, this multi-disciplinary project investigates the lasting significance of the Viennese café. The unique dynamism of Viennese culture at the beginning of the twentieth century was manifested by the innovations of its artists, writers, composers, designers, psychoanalysts and scientists. The city’s famous cafés played a crucial part in this vibrant intellectual and artistic environment. Here pursuits of refreshment, communication, leisure, work, and intellectual exchange co-existed, challenging conventional boundaries between public and private life.

Research will focus on the historical, cultural and artistic complexity of the Viennese café as an urban space in order to better understand the culture of cafes, both past and present. Attention has long been focused on Paris as a cradle of modernity and artistic modernism. Through its focus on the Viennese café, this project aims to redefine our understanding not only of the arts in Vienna, but also of modernity and modern life more generally.

The project is run jointly by Dr Tag Gronberg and Dr Simon Shaw-Miller in the Department of History of Art, Film and Visual Media, Birkbeck College, University of London and Prof. Jeremy Aynsley in the Department of History of Design at the Royal College of Art.

More information on the project can be found at www.rca.ac.uk/viennacafe. We will be covering this carefully, from both the London and the Vienna ends, and are grateful to the organisers for their co-operation.

3. Reading and Discussion Groups

This groups are monitored as charting a largely non-academic audience for the literature of our period. The discussion is often informative, and remains in the on-line archive of each group. It is interesting to see which books are chosen by more than one group, and taken together they form a sort of extra-university anti-canon.

18th19th Century Novel.

This group announces that it will be reading The Picture of Dorian Gray in June. It can be found at http://groups.Yahoo.com/group/18th19thCenturyNovel

The Nineteenth Century Literature Group

This describes itself as ‘a forum for people who enjoy the literature of the 19th century and includes works from all countries. List members participate in group reads and discussions which are not limited to the current selections, and are actively encouraged to recommend other authors or books and to discuss all facets of the 19th century.’

This active group is currently (March) discussing Armadale by Wilkie Collins, to be followed by Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm and Knut Hamsun’s Pan.

The group has 331 members. 133 messages were posted in February.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/19thCenturyLit/

Epoque Victorienne Anglaise En Lisant

This French language group, once very active in discussing British Victorian literature, has languished recently, and although it still has 20 members may be regarded as having ceased to operate. We will advise readers if it is revived. It can be found at http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/EpoqueVictorienneAnglaiseEnLisant/.

French Literature

This is the counterpart of the above, an active English language discussion group of French literature, heavily weighted towards the 19thc. The February book was Mademoiselle de Maupin (83 messages), that for March La Terre, to be followed in April by Jules Verne’s Paris in the Twentieth Century.

It can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FrenchLiterature/ and has 183 members.

Visions

This group is currently reading and discussing books about Vlad Tepes [also known as Vlad the Impaler - Dracula]. Dracula is a subject that we have not hitherto considered for THE OSCHOLARS, as the Wilde connection is rather tenuous (Florence Balcombe / Bram Stoker); but Stoker’s book must be considered part of the decadent literature of the fin-de-siècle.

The schedule is as follows:

Core book: In Search of Dracula by Radu Floresca. 1st to 23rd March/

Fiction: CHOICE OF The Castle in Transylvania by Jules Verne OR Vlad: A Novel by Melodie Romeo. 24th March to 15th April.

Social History: CHOICE OF: Vlad Dracula, the Life and Times of the Historical Dracula by Kurt Treptow OR Transylvania: A Short History by Istvan Lazar. 16th April to 10th May.

Journal: The Journal of Professor Abraham Van Helsing by Allen Kupfer. 11th to 31st May.

Also:
Vlad Dracula the Dragon Prince by Michael Augustyn; Dracula: Prince of Many Faces by Radu Florescu; and of course Dracula by Bram Stoker.

The group is to be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VisionsPP/ and has forty members.

English Literature, Culture, and Society 1880-1920

This group ‘is dedicated to the sharing of information and ideas about any and all aspects of British, North American and European literature, culture and society in the four decades 1880-1920.’

Formerly run from the University of Toronto by Greg Grainger, this has been for the last few years in charge of Rachel Bright (Temple University). The group’s archives to June 2006 can be found at http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/elcs-l.html and a subscription can be effected from that page or by contacting the list owner. There were no postings between June and December last year, and this year of the five postings three are conference announcements and two concern a television adaptation of Jane Eyre, which hardly qualifies as 1880-1920. ELCS is perhaps overshadowed by the VICTORIA group and can really be considered in abeyance.

The Poetry of Thomas Hardy

This is an offshoot of the Thomas Hardy Association. Each month a new poem is discussed. Users have to subscribe in order to participate. To subscribe, please go to the Thomas Hardy Association website:

http://www.yale.edu/hardysoc/Welcome/welcomet.htm

Click on the Poetry Discussion Group button, and then fill in the simple form provided. Once you have subscribed, you will automatically receive all POTM messages and will be able to contribute to the discussions via email.

The March poem is ‘Jezreel’; that for April ‘The Five Students’; that for May, ‘In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”’; for June, ‘Voices from Things Growing in a Churchyard’.

British Studies

NWCBS (North Western and Western Canada British Studies Group) is a low-traffic, non-commercial list for scholars, professors and researchers in British Studies who are located in the Northwestern United States and Western Canada. Members are encouraged to join the North American Conference on British Studies.

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Margaret DeLacy, List moderator.

Bookies Too

This group will be reading Julian Barnes’ Arthur and George in May.

See http://www.geocities.com/bookiestoo/ or http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BookiesToo

TBRBookstoshare

This group will be reading The Bostonians by Henry James in September. Discussions start on the 18th of each month. If you'd like to join or learn more about the group, please visit: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TBRBookstoShare/

Classic Books

This group will be reading Conrad’s The Secret Agent in June. One can join this group at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Classic_Books/

Timeless Tales

This group will be reading Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady in May. See http://groups.msn.com/TimelessTales/_whatsnew.msnw

British Classics

This group will be reading The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins in May; Hardy’s The Return of the Native in and The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins, in August. See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/British_Classics/

ClassicGothicHorror

This group will be reading The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen in May. This group reads and discusses one classic gothic horror book each month. Authors include but are not limited to Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Horace Walpole, Wilkie Collins, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Charles Maturin, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Matthew Lewis, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving and others. We choose our books through nominations and polls.

(Note: this group does not deal with the modern definition of gothic, goth or the goth lifestyle, nor do we discuss vampires in any connotation outside of these novels.)

The group has 120 members and 110 messages were posted in February. See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ClassicGothicHorror/

4. Exhibitions

We believe the visual arts of the fin-de-siècle have been under-represented in THE OSCHOLARS. We intend to rectify this by noticing exhibitions and publications, and reviewing them when possible in tandem with those on the writers of the period. This section has its own page, reached by clicking

Exhibitions noticed this month are:

Bastien-Lapage	Von Stück
Bernard	Tiffany
Burne-Jones	Van Gogh (1)
Carriès	Van Gogh (2)
Cézanne	Van Gogh (3)
Couperus	Vollard (1)
Denis	Vollard (2)
Drouet, Juliette	American Artists
Flandrin	Art Nouveau
Klinger	Australian Impressionists
Lalique	Belgian Art
Macdonald & McNair	Belle époque
Manet	Kinema
Monet	Giverny
Moser	Light
Pissarro, Camille	Orientalism
Pissarro, Lucien	Periodicals
Redon	Plein-Air
Renoir	La Plume
Rodin (1)	Pre-Raphaelites
Rodin (2)	Salon Painting
Sargent (1)	Symbolism
Sargent (2)	Times of Harmony: The Artist’s Paradise in the 19th Century
Sorolla	Women

5. Society News

We do not wish this list to be anglocentric and welcome information about similar organisations in all countries, although French societies are chiefly listed in rue des beaux-arts. News of Societies and Associations are on their own page, and links to the Societies' own websites are included; new ones are added each month. All have been updated.

Societies listed are

HERO SOCIETIES
1. The Louis Couperus Society	10. The Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society
2. The Stephen Crane Society	11. The Octave Mirbeau Society
3. The Ford Madox Ford Society	12. The William Morris Society
4. The A.E. Housman Society	13. The William Morris Society of Canada
5. The Ibsen Society of America	14. The William Morris Society of the U.S.A
6. The Irving Society	15. The John Ruskin Society
7. The Henry James Society	16. The Robert Louis Stevenson Society
8. The Arthur Machen Society	17. The Edith Wharton Society
9. The George MacDonald Society	18. The Emile Zola Society
SUBJECT SOCIETIES
1. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings	8. The Furniture History Society
2. The Irish Association of Art Historians	9. The Association of Historians of Nineteenth Century Art
3. The Scottish Society for Art History	10. The Irish Society for Theatre Research
4. The Arts & Crafts Society of New York	11. The Pre-Raphaelite Society
5. The Bedford Park Society	12. The Association for Theatre in Higher Education
6. The Decorative Arts Society	13. The Society for Theatre Research
7. The Eighteen-Nineties Society	14. The Victorian Society
	15. The Victorian Society in America

Click to reach The Society Page.

We welcome news from all Societies whose remit covers the period 1870-1900, or perhaps beyond: the long fin de siècle. We will also be happy to publish their journals’ Tables of Contents if sent as e-mail attachments to melmoth@aliceadsl.fr.

6. Conferences, Seminars, Lectures

As with the Calls for Papers we maintain this on its own page as a rolling list, adding and subtracting each month. News of Conferences, Seminars and Lectures for inclusion should be sent to our Associate Editor responsible, Dr Florina Tufescu.@

Conferences in this issue:

1. Seminar series on Oscar Wilde

2. Fin de Siècle Studies at Oxford

3. Victorian Literature & Culture

4. Victorian Periodicals

5. Matisse

6. Victorian Pantomime

7. Tradition and Innovation

8. Birth of the Bestseller

9. George Moore

10. Victorian Cosmopolitanism

11. Museums and the Web

12. Theatre Research

13. Theatre, Fin-de-siècle and the Boundaries of Modernism

14. 19th Century Group at UCLA

15. Irish Studies in Hungary

16. Council for European Studies

The page can be reached by clicking

We used to draw readers' attention to the list of lectures taking place in London compiled by Ben Haines at www.indiana.edu/~victoria/lectures.html. This link no longer responds, but the list still exists as part of the Victoria Research Web (click the banner) at http://victorianresearch.org/lectures.html.

<< After we have discussed some Chambertin and a few ortolans,

we will pass on to the question of the critic considered in the light of the interpreter >>

7. The Dublin Gay Theatre Festival.

Inaugurated in 2004 during our period of suspension, the Festival takes place during the first full fortnight of May each year with the 2007 dates being 7th to 20th May. The festival is for men and women of all ages, regardless of their sexual orientation. For more information click the Festival’s banner.

8. The Theatre Museum, London; the British Library; the William Morris Gallery; the Wellcome Library

As previously reported, The Theatre Museum in London’s Covent Garden went dark in the New Year. This is part of the policy by the owner, the Victoria and Albert Museum, to improve its service to the public, or, as they put it themselves ‘Although the Theatre Museum's site in Covent Garden will be closed from January 2007 there is no intention to change the status, role or strategy of the Theatre Museum as the UK's national collection for the performing arts.’

Not surprisingly a Theatre Museum defence association has been founded, the Theatre Museum Guardians’ campaign. More information from Ian Herbert ian@herbertknott.com or office@theatremuseumguardians.org.uk; and at www.theatremuseumguardiansd.org.uk.

The controversy surrounding this goes on and can be followed on the SCUDD list. The most stark case against the Victoria & Albert is made by Stuart Bennett of London Drama : ‘The V and A has reneged on its responsibility to display the theatre collections by closing the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden. According to Paula Ridley, Chair of the Trustees, the reason for closure is the V and A's priority is
the decorative arts. The Medieval and Renaissance Galleries at South Kensington need refurbishing, and the nation's Theatre Museum must close to save costs to finance this. It [the V& A] has turned a deaf ear to viable proposals to reopen and redevelop the Museum. Its staff (apart from the curators) have been dismissed, and it has been removed from its [the V & A’s] web-site.’

The counter-claim is put by Dr Kate Dorney, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Performance, V&A Theatre Museum Collections:

We are now being referred to as the V&A Theatre Collections but for the sake of continuity, the name Theatre Museum is still being used in many circumstances. There will be a new permanent gallery at the V&A and major new exhibitions and touring displays. An exhibition on Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes is scheduled for 2009. Far from being "removed", the website is being developed and enhanced - see www.vam.ac.uk/theatre.

We possess the largest collections in the world relating to the UK's performing arts. These are constantly updated with new material relating to both contemporary and historical performance. We continue to acquire very actively and to welcome approaches from prospective donors. As part of the Victoria and Albert Museum, our acquisition process is governed by the National Heritage Act 1983 and Museums and Galleries Act 1992. Once items are transferred to our ownership, we are committed to preserving them in perpetuity and in accordance with the highest standards of curatorship.

There is no intention to change the status, role or strategy of the Theatre Museum / V&A Theatre Collections as the UK's national collection for the performing arts. Our work of documenting performance and developing our collections continues, and research access to them will go on being provided, as now, at our premises in Kensington Olympia, where the collections have been located since June 2005.

We would be interested to hear from any reader who has recent experience of research under the new dispensation, and, indeed, from anyone who can tell us what is happening to the former Theatre Museum building in Covent Garden.

Other scholarly resources are being menaced. As London prepares to sink hundreds millions of pounds into hosting the Olympic Games, it appears that the cultural institutions will have their grants raided (it is said that it would only have needed £600,000 to save the Theatre Museum). According to one report the British Library will start charging researchers, reduce opening hours, will pulp 15 per cent of its collection, and close the newspaper collection at Colindale. Help is requested: the BL management have said that the more letters of protest (to them, or to the newspapers) the better. The Library is ultimately at the mercy of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, an ill-assorted set of triplets, and will itself contest any cuts. Please e-mail chief-executive@bl.uk or supporters_forum@bl.uk with your name, contact number and message, or write to Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive, The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2D8. There is also http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/library/ to be used.

More can be found at www.bl.uk/spendingreview.html, a forum set up for supporters and to keep everyone informed and engaged with developments.

A similar tale is being told of the William Morris Gallery: deep cutbacks in hours – changes that, according to the local councillor Clyde Loakes ‘are aimed at making the treasures held by our museum and gallery more accessible to the local people who pay for the service.’ Full information, including press coverage and a petition that readers might be interested in signing, is at
http://www.keepourmuseumsopen.org.uk/ or http://www.petitiononline.com/savewmg/petition.html.

Better news comes from the Wellcome Library which will shortly be moving back to its historic home at 183 Euston Road and re-opening there on Monday 16th April. Full details can be found on the website at http://library.wellcome.ac.uk. Moreover, in Manchester, ‘after a £17m facelift, general visitors are welcomed back to the Deansgate building of the John Rylands Library where the exhibition galleries will be re-opened.’ The refurbishment of the neo-Gothic library is said to be ‘stunning’, giving us to understand that the facelift refers to the building and not to the general visitors.

9. The British Cemetery in Florence

This item seems to fit well with the last: we have copied it from VICTORIA. It is signed Reynold Harrs.

In October of 2006 I visited the English Cemetery in Florence and was quite shocked to discover that the cemetery had fallen into such a dilapidated state. As you are aware, this plot of land holds a special significance for anyone interested in the 19th century and earlier. Not only English, but Americans, Canadians, Swiss, Germans - and many other nationals of the Western world are buried there. For those interested in Victorian studies, two names stand out, namely Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Arthur Hugh Clough.

The cemetery has fallen on hard times because the Swiss Evangelical church, which was the original owner of the plot, has abandoned its claim and responsibility, and no institution or country has come to the rescue. Currently, Sister Julia Holloway and her Italian assistant care for the cemetery with the occasional help of volunteers from the United States or Europe. For example, a young woman from Austria volunteered her time to rescue several of the gravestones. Unfortunately, heroic though it be, their contribution can be no better than a finger attempting to damn up a hole in a dam, for what is needed is major financial support. I do believe Sister Julia is campaigning to have the cemetery recognised by the United Nations as something worthy to be preserved.

Accordingly, I am writing to you to lend your voice to the rescue of the English Cemetery in Florence. Anyone who has studied Victorian literature or history is aware of the English Cemetery since, as I mentioned above, it is the burial place of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Arthur Hugh Clough, as well as other well-known authors and preachers. I believe that the study of the Nineteenth Century would be so much the poorer if the cemetery were allowed to decay to the point that its monuments cease to exist. Therefore, I am writing to you, as keepers of the Nineteenth-century culture to use your academic network to -- at the very least -- lobby for the UN Heritage designation. If some of you would embrace this cause as your own, then all the better. I am certain that Sister Julia and her
friends can always use energetic volunteers to aid their cause to preserve
the cemetery.

Here are some links to the English Cemetery:

http://www.florins.ms
http://www.umilita.net
http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com

Sister Julia's email: juliana@tin.it

Mr Harrs also added the following from Sister Julia (i.e. Julia Holloway):

We could add Walter Savage Landor and Fanny Trollope to the list! Fanny Trollope wrote the first anti-slavery novel, Richard Hildreth, an American Consul, wrote the second and is also buried here, then Harriet Beecher Stowe copied both of them! We also have buried here Nadezda, who came, a black slave at the age of 14, from Nubia to Florence, her story told in Cyrillic characters inRussian on her marble cross.

Actually, things are looking up. The Swiss cold not raise funds for the restoration and did not have such sums themselves, having already paid something like a million for the repair of the wall at the order of the Comune. Which wasn't quite fair as the wall was built by the Comune and belonged to the city, not to the little church of just 20 members. But neither church nor city did the research I did into the archives of 125 years ago to find this out! The Comune has magnificently put in traffic lights and a crosswalk! The Museo Archeologico Nazionale currently has an exhibition on the Egyptian motives in the English Cemetery and hasrestored Arthur Hugh Clough's tomb because of the winged sun disk on it. My Aureo Anello Association has funded EBB's tomb restoration. Friends of Leighton House will be completing this task. We are now seeking funds to restore Walter Savage Landor's, William Somerville's (husband to Mary Somerville, the great mathematician), and Ann Susanna Horner's tombs, this last sculpted by the same sculptor as who did Mary Somerville's magnificent tomb in Naples, as they were all friends. We are also now restoring the cemetery to the English garden it was in the nineteenth century and have planted masses of daffodil bulbs to join the irises we already have, as well as grafting the one myrtle left for new ones to replace those the Swiss rooted out to save money and which had been
planted in the nineteenth century, etc. What we are hoping is that the Regione's government will fund the consolidation of the hill which is at risk. We know we can do all this for about 350,000 euro. We are now at 3000 signatures for our petition to UNESCO to be considered a World Heritage site.

It remains for us to add that another who is buried here is Vernon Lee, to whom our new journal The Sibyl is consecrated.

10. The Victorian Newsletter

Following the retirement of Ward Hellstrom, the long serving editor of Victorian Newsletter, it is announced that that the new editor is Professor Deborah Logan, Department of English, Cherry Hall, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY 42101. Submissions are invited on all aspects of Victorian literature and culture. Inquiries: victorian.newsletter@wku.edu

11. Work in Progress

In December 2006 we published a list of fin-de-siècle doctoral theses being undertaken at Birkbeck College, University of London. We should very much like to hear from readers who teach at other universities with news of similar theses they are supervising. We also welcome all news of research being undertaken on any aspect of the fin-de-siècle.

Thomas Wright is currently researching the subject of Oscar Wilde’s reading and would gratefully welcome any information on the current whereabouts of any books formerly belonging to Wilde. He would also be interested in any curious or obscure information relating to books Wilde read and to his reading habits generally. Contact him at @.

John Tepe, a first year PhD student studying at University of Birmingham with Deborah Parsons in the English Department, writes

I hail from Philadelphia, USA and did my undergraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania. I completed my MA last spring at the University of Arkansas. My general academic interests include aestheticism, symbolism, Baudelaire, Symons, urbanism, technology, and travel/movement. My thesis work focuses on the Symbolist movement and looks to explore the visual poetics developed by Baudelaire in Paris and then continued in London by Arthur Symons and others. I am also quite interested in the critical receptions and portrayals of symbolism within the literary field. I am involved in some interdisciplinary projects with the History of Art department and the Midlands Interdisciplinary Studies Seminar series as well.

Since I am relatively new to the Birmingham area and UK academia in general, I look forward to discussing fin-de-siècle issues with all of you via the Oscholars list.

12. Awards

Since January 2007 this section has been transferred to its own page.

To reach it, please click .

We welcome news of awards offered for any aspect of the period 1880-1914.

8. BEING TALKED ABOUT: CALLS FOR PAPERS

This section has its own page. To reach it, please click . We hope these Calls may attract Wildëans.

Any specific papers on Wilde will be noted in future issues of THE OSCHOLARS. Here we draw your attention particularly to this Call for articles for a Special Issue of Modernism/Modernity on British Decadence/aestheticism and modernism from Professor Cassandra Laity.

I am calling for submissions for a special issue on British Aestheticism (or Decadent/Aestheticism) and modernism of Modernism/Modernity (14.5, September 2008). Submissions may treat any aspect of Aestheticism and its relation to modernism and/or the formation of 20th-century ‘modernity.’ The field is open, but topics such Aestheticism 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: 1st February 2008.

Send by attachment to: <claity@drew.edu> and <tdiefenb2002@yahoo.com> or by post to Prof. Cassandra 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 issue of Modernism/Modernity.

Other calls listed this month are:

1. Expositions	14. Children’s Literature (2)	27. Literary Scholarship (3 Calls)
2. Venice 1890-1912	15. Red Light Literature	28. Victorian Emotions
3. Queer Space & Time	16. Currents	29. Symbiosis
4. Irish Literature & Film