___________

An Electronic Journal for the Exchange of Information

on Current Research, Publications and Productions

Concerning

Oscar Wilde and His Worlds

Vol. III

No. 12

Issue number 31: November / December 2006

Revised for removal from www.irishdiaspora.net to www.oscholars.com January 2010.

To the Table of Contents | To hub page  | To THE OSCHOLARS home page

oscholars@gmail.com

Caricature by Gus Bofa

TABLE OF CONTENTS Click on any entry for direct access
I. The Editorial team	continued from col. 1
II. News from The Editor	5. Wilde on the Curriculum
III. GUIDANCE FOR SUBMISSIONS	6. Drinking with Oscar
IV. NEWS FROM READERS	7. Whistler
1. Oscar Wilde in America	8. A Wilde Collection
2. George Moore in Lille	9. Dolly Wilde’s Latest Scandal
3. Cyril Holland	10. Prince Charming
4. Irish Feminism	11. Pierre Louÿs
V. THE CRITIC AS CRITIC: Reviews	12. The Other Oscar
VI. PUBLICATIONS & PAPERS	13. Oscar in Popular Culture
VII. NEWS FROM ELSEWHERE	14. Wilde as Unpopular Culture
1. Reading and Literary Discussion Groups	X. ‘Mad, Scarlet Music’
2. Exhibitions	XI. GOING WILDE: Productions.
3. Society News	XII. WILLIAM CHARLES KINGSBURY WILDE
4. Conferences, Seminars, Lectures	XIII. SHAVINGS
5. The Golden Owl	XIV. WEB FOOT NOTES
6. The Theatre Museum, London	XV. SOME SELL AND OTHERS BUY
7. Work in Progress	XVI. THE WILDE CALENDAR & CHRONOLOGY
8. Awards	XVII. BIBLIOGRAPHIES 1. Christopher Suhal Nassaar 2. Under doctor’s orders
VIII. BEING TALKED ABOUT: CALLS FOR PAPERS	XVIII. AND I? MAY I SAY NOTHING? 1. James Gregory on Constance Wilde 2. Brendan McWilliams on the Weather 3. Christopher Nassaar on rewriting Wilde 4. Emmanuel Vernadakis on Courtisans 5. Maxwell Siegel, a correction
IX. NOTES AND QUERIES	XIX. NEVER SPEAKING DISRESPECTFULLY: THE OSCAR WILDE SOCIETIES & ASSOCIATIONS
1. Naming Names	1. The Oscar Wilde Society
2. Oscar Wilde’s London	2. The Société Oscar Wilde
3. Awards	3. The Oscar Wilde Society of America
4. Oscar Wilde and the Kinematograph	4. Project Oscar Wilde
To top of column 2

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 1 rue Gutenberg 75015 Paris
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 http://users.belgacom.net/wilde
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 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
Associate Editor (The Sybil )* Sophie Menoux Université de la Réunion

* New quarterly supplement in preparation on Vernon Lee.

I. News from the Editor

It has taken as little while to hit our stride (we had hoped that this issue would have appeared on 30th November), but the reactions to our return have been extremely gratifying, new material is rapidly coming in, and we are slowly increasing our numbers again: twenty-seven new subscribers since our return, bringing us to just under a hundred short of our maximum before we went off air.

Since our last issue, we are very pleased that our editorial team has been strengthened by two members, Tiffany Perala (Marylhurst University, Oregon) and Michelle Paull (St Mary’s University College, London). They will keep us informed about new theatre productions in the United States and England and commission reviews. We hope that this will increase our coverage of this important side of our work. Your Editor, who had previously tried to this himself, is now free to develop another of our areas, the art history of the fin-de-siècle. This month we make a start with a greatly expanded list of current and forthcoming exhibitions, which will be continued; in January we will be signalling the contribution to our knowledge of the art of the period by publishing a bibliography of Professor Gabriel P. Weisberg (University of Minnesota), with the generous assistance of Professor Weisberg himself.

The idea of a quarterly supplement devoted to Vernon Lee (The Sybil), under the editorship of Sophie Menoux (Université de la Réunion) is going steadily forward; while in March our George Bernard Shaw offshoot, Shavings, will be joined in the Irish Literary Bulletins folder on www.irishdiaspora.net by Moorings, a supplement devoted to George Moore and his circle, edited by Mark Llewellyn of the University of Liverpool.

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 much enlarged. Oscar Wilde will always at the centre of our concerns, of course, but we plan to cover in greater depth the epoch we call the fin-de-siècle, Wilde’s essential stage setting.

A technical innovation: we will no longer print e-mail addresses as these can be picked up by robot scanners and then used by the senders of junk mail or ‘spam’. Instead, where we wish to give an e-mail address, we will insert the icon and readers will be able to e-mail the person involved by clicking on it. This will take a while to effect through our many pages. If anybody can find a better icon, we will be pleased to use it, for the moment weakly defending the use of an English red letterbox as one familiar to Oscar (even in Dublin).

THE OSCHOLARS is composed in composed in Bookman Old Style. If you do not have this font, you will view the journal in your standard default font.

Contents lists.

It is now possible to view on their own pages

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 say nothing?'. To reach this section, click wherever you see it 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 the from time to time be added. To see it, click

These are all to be found in the Appendices folder. 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 it.

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 before, 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.

II. 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.

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

1. Oscar Wilde in America

Star-Spangled Eden: 19th Century America Through the Eyes of Dickens, Wilde, Frances Trollope, Frank Harris and Other British Travelers by James C. Simmons was published by Carroll & Graf in 2000. The author has very kindly given us permission to republish the chapter on Oscar Wilde (Chapter 8) and this will be posted soon in our LIBRARY. We are most grateful to Mr Simmons, and remind readers that the work is in copyright.

2. George Moore in Lille

Ann Heilmann (University of Hull) is one of the Committee (Fabienne Dabrigeon-Garcier (Université Lille 3), Bernard Escarbelt (Université Lille 3), Christine Huguet (Université Lille 3), Alain Labau (Université de Caen), Mary Pierse (University College Cork)) arranging a George Moore Conference at the Université de Lille next March. See our Conference section for new details.

3. Cyril Holland

The bookseller Karen Cinquemani recently offered for sale on e-bay a copy of the early Methuen edition of An Ideal Husband, signed by Cyril Holland. This had once belonged to Winifred Ker-Seymer. Clearly this demonstrates that Cyril’s parentage was known to his acquaintances and that he was prepared to acknowledge the relationship in this way. We are grateful to Ms Cinquemani for sharing this information with us.

4. Irish Feminism.

Our Associate Editor for Ireland, Maureen O’Connor, who either rejoices in or groans under the title Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) Post-Doctoral Fellow, is organising a Conference on Irish Feminism and hopes this will attract proposals for papers on Speranza. The Call for Papers can be found in our section Being Talked About.

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 Call for Papers can be found in our section Being Talked About.

IV. THE CRITIC AS CRITIC

This month we review Josephine Guy & Ian Small, Christopher Nassaar and Isaure de Saint-Pierre on Oscar Wilde (John McRae, Emmanuel Vernadakis and Mathilde Mazau), Deborah Lutz on Dangerous Lovers (Linda Dryden), Catherine Maxwell on Swinburne (Jarlath Killeen) and a Rodin exhibition (Nicola Gauld).

Click the carnation to see these .

We welcome offers to review from readers.

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

V. 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), see our .PUBLICATIONS page

VI. NEWS FROM ELSEWHERE

1. Obituary

Robert Rosenblum, the American art historian and sometime Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford has died in New York at the age of 79. Specialising in the 19th century, he undertook the re-establishing of a number of forgotten (or despised) artists, often to the bewilderment of other critics. Although his preference was for the early 19th century, in 2000 he curated for the Guggenheim the exhibition ‘Paris at the Crossroads: 1900’, which was also shown at the Royal Academy in London.

v Robert Rosenblum, art historian, b. New York 24th July 1927; d. New York 6th December 2006.

2. Reading and Literary Discussion Groups

The Nineteenth Century Literature Group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/19thCenturyLit/ . The group has 346 members.

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 (12th December 2006) discussing David Copperfield by Charles Dickens to be followed by The Ambassadors by Henry James, The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope and Armadale by Wilkie Collins.

Epoque Victorienne Anglaise En Lisant http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/EpoqueVictorienneAnglaiseEnLisant/. 21 members.

This French language group, once very active in discussing British Victorian literature, has languished recently.

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. This year there have been fewer than a dozen postings, far less than deserved.

The Poetry of Thomas Hardy

Each month a new poem is discussed. This is an offshoot of the Thomas Hardy Association, which gives the following instructions:

You can find the TTHA Poem of the Month Discussion by following the links from the main TTHA page at http://www.yale.edu/hardysoc/Welcome/welcomet.htm or at http://webboard.ilstu.edu/~ttha_potm_discussions.

Whichever route you take, when you arrive at the Poem of the Month site, you will encounter a program called WebBoard, which will give you the opportunity to read the poem as well as any comments it may have generated, compose a response, preview your response, edit it further if you wish, and then post it by using the button labeled Post.  If you are composing an intricate or long response, you may want to prepare your message in a word processing program, then copy it to your clipboard before pasting it into the message area of WebBoard.  And if you prefer, feel free to send your contribution as an email, and it will be posted for you: wwmorgan@ilstu.edu.

The December poem is ‘The Paphian Ball’.

Dublin Reading Group

Desmond O’Malley writes

We are reading and discussing the life and work of W.B. Yeats, meeting September 27th and every two weeks thereafter.

Venue: Central Hotel, Exchequer Street, Dublin, Ireland. All meetings start at 7.30 p.m. Admission free.  All welcome.

2. Exhibitions

As stated in our opening remarks, we believe the visual arts of the fin-de-siècle have been under-represented in THE OSCHOLARS. We believe that we can win a place by noticing exhibitions and publications and reviewing them in tandem with those on the writers of the period. This section has its own page, reached by clicking .

Exhibitions noticed this month are:

Americans in Paris	Grigorescu	Ring
Bastien-Lapage	Hébert	Rodin
Bonnard	Homer, Winslow	Von Stück
Bouguereau	Kahn	Tiffany
Cassatt	Klimt	Toulouse-Lautrec
Cézanne	Klinger	Van Gogh (1)
Charpentier, Alexandre	Macdonald & McNair	Van de Velde
Charpentier, Gustave	Manet	Vollard (1)
Chase	Matisse	Art Nouveau
Couperus	Monet	Impressionists (1)
Degas	Moser	Belle époque
Denis	Pinson, Mimi	The Nabis
Drouet, Juliette	Pissarro, Camille	Orientalism
Ensor	Pissarro, Lucien	Pre-Raphaelites
Filiger	Redon (1)	Women, Parisian
Gallé	Redon	Women, New
Gleyre

3. News of Societies

We do not wish this list to be anglocentric and welcome information about similar organisations in all countries. News of Societies and Associations are on their own page, and links to the Societies' own websites are included; one or two new ones are added each month. All have been updated.

Societies listed are

Table of Contents
Hero Societies	Subject Societies
1. The Louis Couperus Society	1.  The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings
2. The Ford Madox Ford Society	2.  The Arts & Crafts Society of New York
3. The A.E. Housman Society	3.  The Bedford Park Society
4.  The Ibsen Society of America	4.  The Decorative Arts Society
5.  The Irving Society	5. The Eighteen-Nineties Society
6. The Arthur Machen Society	6.  The Furniture History Society
7. The George MacDonald Society	7. The Association of Historians of Nineteenth Century Art
8. The Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society	8. The Pre-Raphaelite Society
9. The Octave Mirbeau Society	9. The Association for Theatre in Higher Education
10.  The William Morris Society	10. The Society for Theatre Research
11.  The William Morris Society of Canada	11. The Victorian Society
12.  The William Morris Society of the U.S.A	12.  The Victorian Society in America
13. The Association of Literary Societies
Go to top of column 2

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 oscholars@gmail.com.

4. 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:

Conferences Past

1. Speranza Lady Wilde

2.  Charles Rennie Mackintosh

3. The Victorians & Race

4. 19thc Studies at UCLA

Conferences Yet to Come

1.  Fin de Siècle Studies at Oxford

2. William Morris

3. Victorian Dramas

4. George Moore

.

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.

5. The Golden Owl

On 26th March last, ‘De Gouden Uil’ (The Golden Owl), a very important annual award for original Dutch literature in two categories (one for adult literature and one for literature for young people) was presented. The winner in the literature for the young people section went to Floortje Zwigtman  with the novel Schijnbewegingen, cited as ‘krachtig gecomponeerde historische roman over de zoektocht van een jongen naar zijn identiteit in het Londen van Oscar Wilde’ (‘a strongly composed historical novel about the search of a boy for his identity in the London of Oscar Wilde’). The jury was unanimous in awarding the prize (25,000 euros). We thank Tine Englebert for this information. She describes the book (which has 505 pages):

It is the story of the young Adrian Mayfield (16 years), in London in 1894. At 14 he works in the pub of his parents; after their bankruptcy he works with a tailor. Later he meets a man, Augustus Trops, and this meeting changes his life. Now he is introduced in a circle of artists, works as a model for painters. Later he becomes a prostitute and the book tells about this life. There are fictitious persons and real persons in the book: the Queenberries: Bosie, John Sholto Queensberry, Lady Queensberry, Francis and Perry; the artists and writers: Beardsley, Max Beerbohm, Frank Harris, Robbie Ross, William Rothenstein, Oscar Wilde; the gentlemen of Little College Street 13:  Alfred Taylor, Bob Cliburn, William Allen, Alfred Wood, Freddy Atkins, Charles Parker, Sidney Mavor and the first client of Adrian, a doctor: Thomas Coombes.

6. The Theatre Museum, London

As many will know, The Theatre Museum in Covent Garden is to go 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.’

7. Work in Progress

The following topics are being researched at Birkbeck College, University of London. We should very much like to hear from readers who teach at other universities.

Key:- (Name; Status; Mode of Study; Start Date; Research Topic)

Marie Banfield; PhD; P/T; 01/10/2002; George Meredith, Evolutionary Science and Psychology

Mackenzie Bartlett; MPhil; F/T; 03/10/05; Laughter and identity in late nineteenth century horror fiction

Sally Dugan; MPhil; F/T; 03/10/05; Baroness Orczy and The Scarlet Pimpernel

Emelyne Godfrey; PhD; F/T; 01/10/2002; Self-defence and Victorian culture

Debbie Harrison; PhD; P/T; 01/10/2003; Addiction in Victorian literature 1830-1900

Christine Hodgson; PhD; P/T; 01/04/2002; London as a literary inspiration

Katherine Inglis: PhD; FT; 10/04; The Nineteenth-century Self: Incoherence and Materiality in Psychology and Literature

Samantha Lewis; MPhil; F/T; 01/01/2004; Modernism and Mysticism

Caroline Maclean; PhD; FT; 10/04; An investigation into the intersections between aesthetics and occultism in early twentieth century Britain with particular emphasis on Russian spiritualist aesthetics

Jackie Marsh; PhD; F/T; 01/10/2000; New woman drama

Victoria Mills; MPhil; F/T; 01/10/2003; The museum idea in Victorian fiction

Damien North; MPhil; PT; 10/04; Postmodernism in Europe

Peter Robinson; MPhil; P/T; 01/10/2002; No single story, no single self: evolving perceptions of consciousness in the transition from the late Victorian to the Modern novel

Lesa Scholl; PhD; PT; 03/10/05; Translation, Mediation and Power: Forms of Translation in Nineteenth Century Women's Writing

Florian Schweizer; PhD; P/T; 01/04/2003; HF; Authorship, the writing profession and literary institutions in Victorian England

Ben Winyard; MPhil; P/T; 03/10/05; HF; The sexual politics of Victorian Anglo-Catholicism 1833-1890

8. Awards

FROM JANUARY 2007 THIS SECTION WILL BE TRANSFERRED TO ITS OWN PAGE.

WE WELCOME NEWS OF AWARDS OFFERED FOR ANY ASPECT OF THE PERIOD 1880-1914.

(i) John Pickard Essay Prize Announcement for 2007

The Pre-Raphaelite Society is now inviting entries in the form of a monograph of not more than 2000 words for The John Pickard Essay Prize for 2007. The monograph may be on any individual related to the Pre-Raphaelite Circle.

The winner will receive a £100 prize and publication in the Spring 2007 Review and subsequently the essays of runners-up may also be published. The final decision will be made by the Committee of the Pre-Raphaelite Society.

Entries are to be received by the Editor by 31st December 2006, and may be emailed to Serena Trowbridge or posted to: Serena Trowbridge, 28 Windermere Road, Moseley, Birmingham B13 9JP, England.

(ii) Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies

INCS Association announces its third annual prize for the best essay published by a member of the Association. The $500 prize will recognize excellence in interdisciplinary scholarship. All nominated essays, whether journal articles or book chapters, must have a publication date of 2005 and must be published by a member of INCS. We encourage self-nominations as well as ones made by other members of INCS.

Three hard copies of the nominated essay must be sent to Teresa Mangum, Department of English, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, 52242, by no later than 10th February 2007.

The prizewinner will be announced at the annual INCS conference in Spring of 2007.

For more information about INCS, visit their website at http://www.nd.edu/~incshp/

(iii) 2007 Morris Society Fellowships

Since 1996 the Society has offered an annual award, now called the Joseph R. Dunlap Memorial Fellowship, which is intended to help scholars, researchers or creative artists in early stages of their careers. It will provide up to $1000 to be used for research and other expenses, including travel to conferences. Projects may deal with any subject--biographical, literary, historical, social, artistic, political, typographical – relating to Morris.

A second award, the William Morris Society Award, may be offered at the Society's discretion. The amounts of the award also may vary, and several smaller awards may be offered up to a total of $1000. In addition, if it chooses the fellowship committee may offer some or all of the William Morris Society award in recognition of a recent translation of one of Morris's works from English into another language. The translation should have been completed or published within the three years prior to the award. We would like (though we do not require) that the translator grant permission for some portion of the translation to appear on our web site. For the translation prize, the ‘early stage’ restriction does not hold. Please send applications by 15th December 2006 to florence-boos@uiowa.edu. Applications for assistance with research or travel should include a two-page description of the proposed project, including a timeline and indication of where the results might be published, a c.v., and a letter of recommendation (which may also be sent by e-mail). For a translation award, please include a copy of the translation, an explanation in English of its scope and contents, publication information if relevant, a c. v., and if possible, a testimonial to the quality of the translation from another native speaker.

(iv) The Phillips Collection Center for the Study of Modern Art

The Phillips Collection Center for the Study of Modern Art announces an annual prize of $5,000, called The Phillips Book Prize, for a first book manuscript that clearly communicates new research in modern or contemporary art from 1880 to the present.  The winner will have his or her manuscript published by the University of California Press - part of a series of first books - and will be invited to give public presentations at the Phillips in fall 2007. 

The jury will favor those subjects related to the artists and interests reflected in The Phillips Collection's areas of collecting.  Authors who have completed a Ph.D. within the preceding five years are especially encouraged to apply.  Scholars who have had books published are not eligible.

HOW TO ENTER: Entries must include a cover letter; CV; three letters of recommendation sent under a separate cover; book abstract (one page); and a proposal (8 - 10 pages), including an overview of the project, chapter outlines, plan for revision of the manuscript into a book, and scholarly area of focus within the field of modern/contemporary art.

Send eight copies to: Alexsandra Remorenko, Center for the Study of Modern Art, The Phillips Collection

1600 21st St., NW Washington, D.C. 20009. aremorenko@phillipscollection.org

WHEN: The proposal deadline is 15th January 2007.  If an author is selected as a finalist, the complete manuscript must be submitted for consideration by 2nd March 2007, prior to an interview with the jury in Washington, D.C.  The winner will be announced in mid-April 2007.

www.phillipscollection.org

(v) The Trollope Prize.

The prize is awarded annually to the best undergraduate essay in English on the works of Anthony Trollope. Comparative essays, such as those comparing the work of Trollope and Austen or Trollope and Dickens, will also be considered.  Submissions are invited from around the world and must be received by Friday, 1st June 2007.

The Expository Writing Program at Harvard is pleased to administer the prize, which was established by an anonymous benefactor to encourage the reading, teaching, and enjoyment of Trollope’s novels.

First prize is $2,500 and a hard-cover copy of one of Trollope’s works. The faculty sponsor of the winning essay will receive $1,000, and the sponsor’s department will receive $500 for curriculum development.  Second and third place prizes (including funds for sponsors and departments) may also be awarded, subject to the discretion of the judges.

For more information about submission guidelines, and to read prize-winning essays from the past few years, please see website at http://my.harvard.edu/k13048. Results from the 2006 Trollope Prize are posted on the website.

For further information, please contact (mentioning THE OSCHOLARS) Sarah Emsley, Expository Writing Program, Harvard University, 8 Prescott Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. semsley@fas.harvard.edu

VII. BEING TALKED ABOUT: CALLS FOR PAPERS

This section also 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.

VIII. NOTES AND QUERIES

« Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are. »

1. Naming Names

Very early on we carried an item about Oscar’s names, and now add a further note. First, we republish our original item, from Volume II no 4 (April 2002):

We wonder how many readers are aware of Oscar O'Flahertie William Wills Wilde (fl.1740-50), described as an 'Irish gardener employed on the estate of Arkady Appolinarevich Tarasov near Yekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk) in S. Ukraine. Generally credited with the introduction of hemp etc to this and neighbouring estates. Great-great-great-uncle of the famous Irish writer'. Ray Desmond: The Dictionary of British & Irish Botanists and Horticulturalists, including Plant Collectors, Flower Painters and Garden Designers. London: Taylor & Francis and The Natural History Museum 1994 p.739. This was drawn to our attention a few years ago by the palæobotanist Maureen Scannell, and we have waited until now to disseminate the information.

Rather to our surprise, nobody offered to take this further. We now have another Oscar Wilde for you: The Revd Oscar Wade Wilde, curate of St Barnabas’ in Pimlico, London, and Vicar of St Ives in Cambridgeshire from 1899 until his retirement in 1930 at the age of 72. Though never Canon Wilde, he was appointed Rural Dean from 1904 to 1917. His photograph shows the unmistakable Wilde head, and his heavy build suggests that this was a Wilde characteristic (omitted in Sir William), rather than (or as well as) an Elgee one; just as the repetition of the name Oscar further distances the naming of our Oscar from the Swedish King. Perhaps a reader interested in Church history, or just with access to Crockford’s Clerical Directory, can take this a little further?

2. Oscar Wilde’s London

The London Adventure is a small company specialising in introducing Literary London in the form of guided walking tours, with due weight given to Victorian London. It has been run for several years by Nicolas Granger-Taylor, a member of The Eighteen-Nineties Society and an expert on the period.

All walks are free.

At the end of each walk there is a collection for voluntary donations to THE LONDON ADVENTURE RUSSIAN ORPHANS FUND. All donations are used to buy books, games, toys and art materials for children in under-funded Russian orphanages. Last year the Fund raised over £1,100 – many thanks to all contributors! If you wish to send a cheque in pounds sterling, please make it payable to The London Adventure Russian Orphans Fund and post it to Nick Granger-Taylor at the address below. All donations will be gratefully received.

London Adventure is publicised by a Newsletter, which also contains notes for further (or anterior) reading. We will announce the tours most relevant to the London of Oscar Wilde. For further information and updates on The London Adventure walks and The London Adventure Russian Orphans Fund, and to be on the mailing list, please visit the website: www.thelondonadventure.co.uk or contact Nick Granger-Taylor, 35 Grafton Way, London W1T 5DB. Tel: 020 7387 7942 Mobile: 07791 029 770 Email: ngrangertaylor@aol.com.

The programme for 2007 is now being prepared.

3. Constance Wilde

In order to flag the important article by James Gregory on Constance Wilde that appears in our section ‘And I? May I Say Nothing?’, we here reproduce a colourful recollection of the Wildes by Lady Duff Gordon. After separating from her husband, Lady Duff Gordon, the sister of Elinor Glyn, designed women’s clothes under the name ‘Lucile’, which give a certain authority to these otherwise unreliable memories.

It was through Sir Morell Mackenzie that I first met some of the notable figures of the artistic world of that time. His Thursday evening parties were famous for their gatherings of celebrities. At one of them I met Oscar Wilde. I thought him the oddest creature I had ever seen, with his long, golden hair, his black velvet knee-breeches and the sunflower in his buttonhole. Gilbert had just made him the hero of his Patience, and everyone was quoting the “Greenery yallery, Grosvenor Gallery…” etc. Mrs Wilde was an even stranger figure than her husband, and dressed with a total disregard of taste. She was about to become a mother, and was evidently very proud of the fact, for instead of trying to conceal it as Victorian decorum demanded with voluminous draperies, she wore the tightest dress I have ever seen ornamented with a sash of vivid scarlet. The effect was startling, to say the least. However, both husband and wife were tremendously popular and went everywhere.

– Lucy Lady Duff Gordon: Discretions and Indiscretions. London: Jarrolds 1932 p.39.

4. Oscar Wilde and the Kinematograph

News

With a report circulating that Rupert Everett wants to make a film devoted to the last years of Wilde’s life, another that there is to be a new Dorian Gray directed by Mick Davis with Ryan Philippe and Eva Herzigova in the cast, and Al Pacino’s interest in a film about Salome, Wilde seems to be everywhere. Even this does not exhaust the list: A Woman of no Importance is being filmed and is expected to be released in 2007. Directed by Janusz Kaminski, with a screenplay by Howard Himelstein, it features the actors Annette Bening, Sean Bean and Lindsay Lohan.

Our January issue will carry an account of Mr Pacino’s visit to Dublin.

Posters

This section, in which we are displaying film posters, began in April 2003. After appearing here, these are posted on their own page, called POSTERWALL, gradually building up a gallery that will make the images more accessible than by searching the Internet. This can be found by clicking on the icon

This month’s posters were found for us by Danielle Guérin. We apologise for any lack of definition.

5. Wilde on the Curriculum

We are always anxious to publicise the teaching of Wilde at both second and third level, and welcome news of Wilde on curricula. Similarly, news of the other writers on whom we are publishing (Shaw, George Moore and Vernon Lee).

6. Oscar Wilde, shaken and perhaps stirred.

[We carried this item in our last issue, but with the new vintage now in the wine shops we think we can repeat it.]

During the 1880s at the Café Royal, Whistler discovered the claret Château Mille-Secousses and according to R.H. Sherard this was the wine that he drank with Wilde. (Robert H Sherard: Oscar Wilde, the Story of an Unhappy Friendship. London: Greening & Co. 1905. Popular edition 1908 p.89). This wine is still produced and the vineyard (not far from Bordeaux) has a website at http://www.mille-secousses.com/, and wine can be ordered.

The wine retails in Paris at under five euros for the current vintage; older vintages may also be found. This must clearly be the claret of choice for all oscholars.

7. Whistler

The names of Whistler and Wilde being inextricably linked, we devoted a good deal of space to Whistler in his centenary year of 2003. This monthly section developed its own page called Nocturne. We are now editing and collating the material, and Nocturne will form a permanent supplement to THE OSCHOLARS, where any new information on the Whistler will be published, as well as exhibition and book reviews. This will be mentioned in future Notes & Queries under Whistler, with a link to Nocturne, into which it will then be incorporated. We are very grateful to the Whistler scholar Dr Patricia de Montfort (University of Glasgow) for helping to develop this idea.

Notice of two forthcoming exhibitions has been posted this month.

To see Nocturne, click

8. A Wilde Collection

An archive of documents concerning Wilde has been donated to the University of Leeds. These include some of Wilde's lecture notes from his 1882 tour of America and a copy The Chameleon is also a part of the collection. The donors of the new collection are Geoffrey and Fay Elliott of New York. We will give a more detailed account in a future edition of THE OSCHOLARS.

9. Dolly, The Importance of being Dolly Wilde

In our last issue we reported on a production of a play of this name, produced at the Universities of Vigo and Santiago de Compostela in April 2005, adding that ‘It presumably derives at one remove from the Spanish translation published by Mondadori of Truly Wilde, the biography of Dolly by Joan Schenkar, but if so Ms Schenkar was not consulted… Perhaps once more a court case will be provoked…’ This brought an answer (24th October) from the play’s producer Angel Seoane, which we reproduce in full as received:

Hello, I´m Angel Seoane, from “Quartoescuro”.
It was so nice to see your article about our play “A importancia de
chamarse Dolly Wilde”. I’d just like to thank you for visiting our web
site. I know it’s not perfect, and it has defective pages, cause we
have not much time to repair it.
I’d like you to know that our play is not an adaptation from the
Spanish translation published by Mondadori of Truly Wilde, the
biography of Dolly by Joan Schenkar. It´s an original play, about the
life and Dolly Wilde, and his lovers and friends. A play about the soul
of a woman that lives under the influence of his uncle, and always
judged by the people around her.

This is the story of the play, it’s in our website:

“A play that takes places in the last 20’s, about a group of woman
that try to make her visible in a cultural and artistic world that
don’t see them like real artists. One of them is Dolly Wilde, under the
influence of his uncle that made her seem a bad artist, always judged
by the high class, and with bad luck in her love stories. This is the
reason for Dolly to put a mask everyday to face the world, a mask that
mades her lose herself”

The play is not like the real story of Dolly Wilde. It’s a free
adaptation of his life. We wanted to talk about a woman that hides his
real face to the world, and makes her going deeper and deeper into a
circle of drugs, alcohol and lies. A woman that every night has to say
the truth to herself, look her real face in the mirror, and every
morning wears again her mask.

We are an amateur company, people ho likes theater and plays, thah
win no money with their plays. We tried to do something good. And we think
we did. We’d like to think this is a good play. And it’s ours, with all
its problems and goodnees.

So thanks for talking about us, that mada us really happy.

I hope you enjoy this information, or at less have a good time joking
about my horrible english (I know it’s horryble, i’m sorry about that)

For anything you want my mail is angel@quartoescuro.org

We passed this on to Joan Schenkar, who replied (25th October) that she could not see how the play could be other than sourced in her book. Ms Schenkar, through her agent, then tried to obtain clarification from Señor Seoane, but to date (14th December 2006) has received no reply. We now reproduce, again in full, an open letter from Ms Schenkar (6th December).

Sympathetic as I am to experimental theatre companies (I've had a 25
year career as a playwright), and charmed as I was by the ingenuousness
of Mr. Angel Seoane's claims that his company's 2005 play, "A
importancia de chamarse Dolly Wilde," has nothing to do with my 2000
biography of Dolly Wilde,  TRULY WILDE (TRULY WILDE's title in Spanish:
"La importancia de llamarse Dolly Wilde"), I feel I must call Mr.
Seoane's attention to some crucial points.

1)  TRULY WILDE is the sole source of published material about Oscar's
unusual niece. Unless Mr. Seoane spent 2 years (as I did) in a Paris
library reading and notating Dolly's letters, and unless Mr. Seoane
spent two further years (as I did) travelling the world to interview
Dolly's intimates, his information about Dolly Wilde's life could only
have come from my biography –- a book which was published in his native
country, Spain, in 2002, and was very well publicized by
Randomhouse/Mondadori.

2) Aside from the similarity of  the Spanish title of the  play to the
Spanish title of my book, the cast list for the play includes two
"characters," Berthe Cleyrergue and Alla Nazimova, whose relations with
Dolly were ONLY introduced in my biography. Berthe Cleyrergue,  Dolly's
warmest supporter, was my adopted grandmother for fifteen years and the
source of much detail about Dolly Wilde's life. Dolly's affair with
the great Russian actress Alla Nazimova was exposed in my book.

International copyright law is very clear on the subject of how
copyrights can be infringed upon by "unauthorized derivatives of a
book." With clarification in mind,  my literary agent sent two detailed
email letters to Mr. Seoane – one in October and one in early November
-- asking him to mail us a copy of his company's play so that we could
make comparisons that would settle the matter. Interestingly, there has
been no response from Mr. Seoane. We will, naturally, be following this
matter closely.

Both Dolly Wilde and her illustrious uncle  Oscar suffered from
attempts to suppress their artistic identities. Oscar's plays were
produced without his name attached to them; Dolly's literary
translations also went unacknowledged.

I notice that Mr. Seoane cast himself in the role of Oscar Wilde in a
production of his company's play. Anyone who attempts to step into
Oscar's shoes, should also make the effort to adopt some of Oscar's
manners. The very least Mr. Seoane should have done would be to
acknowledge his sources.

Yours sincerely,
Joan Schenkar

We only comment that the capacity for causing controversy that Oscar set in train at Oxford a hundred and thirty years ago is not yet exhausted… We will of course report any further developments.

10. Dorian Gray

Following our Note in our last issue on Markby, Markby & Markby, readers may be interested in an exchange that recently appeared on VICTORIA, the discussion list for Victorian literature that is part of the Victorian Research Web. Jason Boyd (University of Toronto) asked

I assumed that when Sybil Vane calls Dorian Gray ‘Prince Charming’ she was referring to a character from a Victorian pantomime Cinderella. Yet, according to www.peopleplay.uk, it is only after WWI that Cinderella's prince is identified as ‘Prince Charming’.  I can't seem to find historical references to ‘Prince Charming’ in fairy tales of the period. So where is Wilde getting the ‘Prince Charming’ reference?

This brought the following interesting responses:

I'd assume it's to Sophy Beckett's 1888 novel of the same title.

– Jess Nevins (Sam Houston State University)

According to Answers.com, Madame d'Aulnoy wrote  two fairy tales, ‘The Story of Pretty  Goldilocks’, where the hero was named Avenant, and ‘The Blue Bird’, where the hero was Le roi charmant. When Andrew Lang retold the first for The Blue Fairy Book [1889], he rendered the  hero's name as ‘Charming’ and in the second, for The Green Fairy Book, as King Charming. 

– Bob Lapides

This opens a new investigation into Wilde’s reading. Oscholars may make their own contribution for publication here, although perhaps the phrase had long been in common use – Danielle Guérin informs us that le Prince Charmant occurs in Perrault’s ‘La belle au bois dormant’ (Sleeping Beauty).

11. Pierre Louÿs (1870-1925) and the William Andrews Clarke Library: A note by Bruce Whiteman.

When Oscar Wilde published his play Salomé in 1893, it was dedicated to his friend Pierre Louÿs, a young French poet and writer who would later regret his friendship with Wilde, out of an odd moral scruple – odd, given the risqué character of a good deal of Louÿs’s own work – and break off all relations. Wilde was in Paris in 1891, and Louÿs was one of the young idolizers who was often in his company, along with Marcel Schwob and André Gide. Wilde inscribed a copy of his collection of stories, The House of Pomegranates, to Louÿs very elaborately (‘Au jeune homme qui adore la Beauté/Au jeune homme que la Beauté adore/Au jeune homme que j’adore’), and valued Louÿs’s advice deeply enough to ask him to review the French text of Salomé. (The Clark acquired Louÿs’s own copy of a rare trial edition of the play in 1932.)

Louÿs had a succès de scandale with two early books that established his reputation as an important 1890s writer: his ‘forged’ collection of poems, Les Chansons de Bilitis (1894), published as though they were newly discovered poems by a hitherto unknown Greek poet, and his first novel, Aphrodite (1896). (François Coppée’s review of Aphrodite in Le Journal began by his admitting that he was constantly collaring friends and asking them whether they had read the book, and if not, why not.) Two books followed that were also very popular, La femme et le pantin (1898) and Les aventures du roi Pausole (1901); but with these four works, Louÿs’s literary career was largely finished. Sanguines (1903), a collection of stories, Archipel (1906), a collection of newspaper articles, and Poétique (1916) sank pretty much without a trace, and only some scholarly and bibliographical work of his appeared during the last ten years of his life. His final decade was full of despair and sadness, as a note found among his papers after his death suggests. It began: ‘S’il m’arrivait un bonheur, c’est-à-dire si je mourais…’ (‘If something good should happen to me, i.e. if I were to die…’).

Given Louÿs’s important, if short-lived, friendship with Wilde, the Clark has begun to collect the French writer’s books. First editions of the first two, including a lovely presentation copy of Le femme et le pantin, have already been acquired, as well as a number of posthumously published texts and editions of the early books. It was during the last decade of his life that Louÿs wrote a number of erotic works that were intended to remain unpublished, but eventually many of these were issued in more or less clandestine editions. Trois filles et leur mère is the best known of these, and the Clark recently bought a copy of the rather sumptuously printed first edition of this text, printed on paper watermarked ‘Syuol Erreip’ – the author’s name spelled backwards – and published in 1926, shortly after Louÿs’s death. An extravagantly illustrated edition of Aphrodite from the late 1940s was also added to the collection recently, in a copy that includes fifteen of the original watercolors.

–Bruce Whiteman, Head Librarian, William Andrews Clark Library.

12. The Other Oscar

Our regular collection of research material for the life of that other Oscar Wilde in his parallel universe.

From the Washington Post Friday, May 22, 1998:

With three recent biographical plays about the 18th-century Irish writer, Oscar Wilde is all the rage.

13. Oscar in Popular Culture

Editions du Désastre has published its literary calendar for 2007. Each month has a page dedicated to a writer and Wilde, supported by the paragraph from The Picture of Dorian Gray that begins ‘As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form…’, has the page for September. The others are Rimbaud (January), Balzac (February), Poe (March), Victor Hugo (April), Shakespeare (May), Proust (June), Verlaine (July), Flaubert (August), Kafka (October), Lewis Carroll (November) and Baudelaire (December): distinguished company even if Shakespeare, Kafka and Lewis Carroll seem interlopers.

The Calendar has the ISBN 2-87770-888-5, and has distributors in Canada, The Netherlands, Switzerland, The United States, and Great Britain. The Dutch distributor is, appropriately, Decadence. In France our copy cost 14 euros, but we have seen it subsequently for 12.

From Ulick O’Connor: The Ulick O’Connor Diaries 1970-1981. London: John Murray 2001, reprinted 2003. Entry for 4th May 1970:

Spent the night at Leixlip Castle. Came down this morning to breakfast to find Mick Jagger [reading] Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales. Seeks to enrol me as an enthusiast and seems a little disappointed to find I already am.

From an e-mail Newsletter (kindly sent us by Maureen E. Mulvihill (Princeton Research Forum)).

Wilde, Mother & Son

Oct 16, 2006

On this day in 1854 Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin, and by all accounts, including Oscar's, cut from his mother's cloth: "How ridiculous of you to suppose that anyone, least of all my dear mother, would christen me 'plain Oscar'.... I started as Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde. All but two of the five names have already been thrown overboard. Soon I shall discard another and be known simply as 'The Wilde' or 'The Oscar.'" [full story]

14. Wilde as Unpopular Culture

Malcolm Reid drew our attention to this passage from Ford Madox Ford’s The March of Literature (Allen & Unwin 1939) p.729

IBSEN AND THE FIN-DE-SIÈCLE

Ibsen’s ‘message’ came at a moment when the world – as it will do at times – had worked itself into a perfect fever that we used then to call fin-de-sieclism. By it we explained every folly and excused every crime […] It affected everybody from the highest to the lowest […] It affected still more the artist in his garret and the dilettante on his padded sofa. The artist so set to work that poor dear old London for the first time in her existence became the centre of an art. So perhaps she might well have remained had not that same fin-de-siècle spirit prompted a half artist called Oscar Wilde to excesses that, as in subsequent private conversations he confessed, used to make him vomit. He was pushed to this by his desire to ‘touch on the raw’ a philistinism that, in spite of his tremendous notoriety at the time, did not in his estimation sufficiently applaud his unusual gifts. His conviction killed for a number of years the art of literature in England […] But you would not be altogether in the wrong if you regarded the ‘fall’ of Wilde as the effects of a breath of pine-laden breeze from the Northern forests creeping into the fog- and patchouli-laden air of a London drawing-room.

IX. 'MAD, SCARLET MUSIC'

This section is compiled by our Assistant Editor for Music, Tine Englebert of the Rijksuniversiteit Gent, Belgium, who welcomes contributions and observations.

To go to the 'Mad, Scarlet Music' page, click .

X. GOING WILDE

This section also has its own page created especially for it. To reach it, click

Contributions to this section of THE OSCHOLARS from anywhere in the world will be very welcome indeed. We will do our best to arrange reviews, and volunteers are sought.

Complimentary tickets can usually be provided.

We thank those readers who have drawn our attention to many of these productions.

XI. WILLIAM CHARLES KINGSBURY WILDE

Throughout 2003 we published material on Willie Wilde, including the poems that he published in Kottabos. This material has been gathered together as a single section, 'A Brother of Any Sort', to which we hope to make future additions.

Click here to reach 'A Brother of Any Sort'.

XII. SHAVINGS

Our supplement Shavings (news of productions and publications on George Bernard Shaw, and of the Shaw Societies) has now been moved into the folder Irish Literary Bulletins [and out again, when www.oscholars.com was founded]. Reach Shavings by clicking the picture of a cornet:

XIII. WEB FOOT NOTES

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

All the material thus far published in the monthly 'Web Foot Notes' was brought together in June 2003 in one list called 'Trafficking for Strange Webs'. New websites will continue to be reported here, after which they will be filed on the Trafficking for Strange Webs page.

Every so often, we will revisit these sites and our comments on what we find there will posted under the original entry. A Table of Contents has been added for ease of access.

The Société Oscar Wilde en France is also publishing on its website two lists (‘Liens’ and ‘Liaisons’) of recommendations.

To see Trafficking for Strange Webs, click

To see ‘Liens’, click here.

To see ‘Liaisons’, click here.

Sites newly visited

(a) http://www.johnwilliamwaterhouse.com/ is devoted to the late Pre-Raphaelite painter J.W. Waterhouse (1849-1917) aiming to be ‘a central repository of information about Waterhouse's life and work’, an aims which shows very sign of succeeding. It has been on-line since January 2000 and although its parentage is not clear, a Seattle address is given for ‘snail mail’ contact. It seems to be updated regularly.

(b) http://www.gusbofa.com/ is dedicated to the cartoonist Gus Bofa (1883-1968), one of the Montmartrois ‘fumistes’ of the fin-de-siècle. A very attractive and well designed site, it houses the cartoon of Oscar Wilde reproduced (with kind permission) as our frontispiece this month. The site is created by Emmanuel Pollaud-Dulian.

(c) For a recording of Merlin Holland from a Belgian wireless broadcast, go to http://lireestunplaisir.skynetblogs.be/archive-week/2005-49; then go down the page to the two books on Wilde (almost at the end) and click on the first green button. Site recommended by Danielle Guérin.

XIV. SOME SELL AND OTHERS BUY

Our guide to Wilde items for sale and related bookshops, has its own page .

Booksellers may like to note that we are very happy to post news of items for sale between catalogue times, and of course we will carry any items for sale or wanted by readers.

XV. THE WILDE CALENDAR & CHRONOLOGY

The Calendar is a day by day record of events concerning Wilde, originally monthly published in THE OSCHOLARS from July 2001 to June 2002.

Corrections and additions are anxiously sought and will be published here with acknowledgments before being added to the Calendar.

We have now also designed this as a Chronology, where the events are given in sequence. We thank John Cooper for suggesting this.

To go to the Calendar, click here; to go the Chronology, click here.

XVI. BIBLIOGRAPHIES

In this section we publish brief bibliographies of Wilde. These are in a simple form as references, rather than detailed lists in a bibliophile sense. Contributions welcome. A guide to the bibliographies is given each month, and these are also subsequently posted on their own page, reached by clicking

This enables us to add new items to the lists: such additions will be announced here.

A substantial bibliography is also to be found on the Princess Grace Library site:

http://www.pgil-eirdata.org/html/pgil_datasets/authors/w/Wilde,O/crit.htm

In February 2003 we published a list of works on Wilde by Rainer Kohlmayer (University of Mainz) and by Rita Severi (University of Verona), and in March 2003 we listed the articles on Wilde by the late Jerome Buckley as well as a list of articles on Wilde published in English Literature in Transition. In April 2003 to coincide with a list of books wanted by Mosher Books, we added a list of Wilde's works published by the original Mosher firm. In May 2003 we begin a bibliography of The Importance of being Earnest, to which we hope readers will contribute.

June’s bibliography was of the writings on Wilde of H. Montgomery Hyde. As always, we welcome additions and corrections, and thank Alfred Armstrong (Frank Harris webmaster) for drawing our attention to H. Montgomery Hyde's introduction to Frank Harris: Mr and Mrs Daventry (Richards Press, 1956), which contains a brief history of how it came to be written.

In July 2003, Linda Wong (Hong Kong Baptist University) provided a list of recent articles in Chinese journals, to which we added a few other titles linking Wilde and the Middle Kingdom.

Dr Wong's own 'The Initial Reception of Oscar Wilde in Modern China: With Special Reference to Salome' (Comparative Literature and Culture 3, Hong Kong September 1998, pp.52-73) is republished by kind permission in THE OSCHOLARS Library.

The August 2003 bibliography was of the publications of the Eighteen Nineties Society, which has, since its inception, promulgated a significant publications programme of books and pamphlets. In September 2003, we published a bibliography of Arabic translations of Wilde, generously compiled for us by Christopher S. Nassaar (American University, Beirut). No such bibliography has been compiled before now. In October 2003, we decided to mark the production by Adrian Noble of A Woman of No Importance at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London, with a bibliography of articles, but found only two devoted to this play. We are certain that there must be more! We padded this out with six articles on An Ideal Husband. Our last issue (October 2006) saw a bibliography (also lamentably short) for A Woman of No Importance.

1. Christopher Suhal Nassaar

As noted above, in September 2003 we published the first Arabic Wilde bibliography, compiled by Christopher Nassaar. As we publish elsewhere in this issue a review by Emmanuel Vernadakis of Professor Nassaar’s Ernest Revisited, and a chapter from it, we here give a bibliography of Professor Nassaar’s own writings on Wilde and the period, kindly provided by himself.

2. Under doctors’ orders

The publication of Ashley Robins’ Lancet article rekindled interest in the medical history of the Wilde family, and this was boosted by the Chapter on Oscar in Deborah Hayden’s Pox.

Patrick O’Sullivan has drawn the attention of subscribers to his Irish Diaspora JISCmail group to the availability on line of indices to medical journals. Entering Oscar’s and Sir William’s names in the Search engine at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi will bring up dozens of articles in which one or other of the Wildes are mentioned. Some of these can be read in full, others only in summary. Mr O’Sullivan listed a selection in no particular order, and we will make further selections in future. To see what we have on the medical side, click here.

XVII. AND I? MAY I SAY NOTHING?

This section, which has its own page, is intended for pieces too long for the Notes & Queries section but perhaps not quite substantial enough for articles in the print journals; or for ripostes. It may serve also as a notice board of early drafts, with comments invited; for papers given to conferences; for work that has been cut from articles elsewhere by unfeeling and purblind editors; or simply for work that we want to publish.

This section will also contain occasional vanity publishing by the Editor.

In the last issue we published Sven-Johan Spånberg: ‘Green Flowers and Golden Eyes: Wilde’s Salome and the Novels of Balzac, the abstract of a paper to be delivered at the University of Lund; and ‘On Losing Both One's Parents: Carelessness Or Tampering?’ by Maxwell E. Siegel, an examination of the well-known line for The Importance, which was intended for publication in our aborted issue of November 2003. Also published last month was one of the Editor’s articles, on Vyvyan Holland.

This month, we publish

1. James Gregory on Constance Wilde and Lady Mount Temple, an important article that comes out of Dr Gregory’s research in the Mount Temple papers.

2. Brendan McWilliams on the Weather in Wilde’s writings, a more complete version of a piece that appeared in The Irish Times.

3. Christopher Nassaar on rewriting Wilde, the background to his novel Earnest Revisited.

4. Emmanuel Vernadakis on Courtesans, a ‘taster’ from Dr Vernadakis’ conference paper at Lyon.

5. Maxwell Siegel, a correction to the article that appeared in our last issue.

To go to ‘And I? May I Say Nothing?’ click .

See also the LIBRARY for articles republished from elsewhere.

We remind readers that original work may be submitted to The Wildean and to Impressions, the journals of the Oscar Wilde Society and the Oscar Wilde Society of America (see next item).

XVIII. NEVER SPEAKING DISRESPECTFULLY

THE OSCAR WILDE SOCIETIES & ASSOCIATIONS

v We welcome news from any Oscar Wilde group.

1. The Oscar Wilde Society

THE OSCHOLARS happily continues its cousinly association with the Oscar Wilde Society. A membership form which can be copied and printed is below. The Society now has its own website, www.oscarwildesociety.co.uk.

Donald Mead, Chairman of the Society, writes:

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, including author's lunches and dinners, and visits to places in Great Britain and overseas associated with Wilde. The Society's Annual General Meeting is held in London, and the annual Birthday Dinner takes place at the Cadogan Hotel, London. The Society's most recent events are reported in Intentions, the Society's newsletter.

The Society issues to its members a valuable print journal, The Wildean, and a Newsletter, Intentions, the costs of which are covered solely by membership subscriptions.

New members are very welcome. The current annual individual subscription (UK) is £20 and household membership £25. The rates for overseas membership are £23 (European postal area) and £28 (Rest of the World). Subscribers receive two issues of The Wildean and about six issues of Intentions each year.

Contacts for the Society are given below.

The Wildean

The Society's Journal of Oscar Wilde Studies–The Wildean–is published twice a year (in January and July). It is edited by Donald Mead, and the Reviews Editor is Dr Anya Clayworth. It contains features on a variety of subjects relating to Wilde, including articles, reviews and correspondence.

Over the years, a number of previously unpublished Wilde letters have been reproduced in facsimile, with commentaries, and the support received from Merlin Holland in doing this is gratefully acknowledged. The Wildean also publishes articles giving the results of research into a number of aspects of Wilde's life, particularly his lecture tour in the British Isles. Books of Wildean interest are reviewed as soon as possible after issue.

The Wildean is a publication of permanent interest (MLA listed and indexed) and copies of all back issues are available. Details from the Editor (see below). Librarians and collectors interested in acquiring sets are invited to contact the Editor for details of contents and prices.

Contributions to future issues of The Wildean are invited, both articles and shorter items—reviews, notes and correspondence. Guidelines for submissions are available from the Editor, and articles should be sent to him at the address given below.

The next issue of The Wildean will be published in January 2007.

Editorial policy

The editorial policy of The Wildean is to publish studies of the life, works and times of Oscar Wilde and his circle. The aim is to print material which will interest Wilde specialists and also be accessible to general readers. Full-length articles, reviews, short items and correspondence are all welcome.

In addition to the publication of articles of scholarly interest, including those incorporating the results of new research, works about Wilde published in English are reviewed as soon after publication as possible.

Guidelines for contributors

The language accepted for publication is English. Any passages in other languages that may be quoted must be accompanied by an English translation.

It is the contributor's responsibility to seek any necessary permission to use copyright material.

Style guide: British norm. The Oxford Manual of Style (Oxford University Press, 2002) is very useful. Adjustments may be made editorially.

Footnotes are an interruption to the reader and should generally be avoided.

Endnotes should be used for documentation and citation of sources, not for extra expository material which is better incorporated in the text.

Suggested length:

Articles: 400 words upwards. 6,000 words, including notes, is the maximum.

Reviews: 300-1,000 words

Notes: 100-300 words.

Concision and clarity are sought. Articles of between 2,000 and 4,000 words are particularly favoured. Jargon should be avoided, and academic tone and analytical style moderated. Articles should hold the attention of the general reader.

Submission: Preferably, text in Word either on disc or by e-mail. Please do not incorporate footnote or endnote formatting. Alternatively, one typescript copy. Fax submissions cannot be accepted.

No submission fees or page charges are required.

Copyright ownership: individual contributors.

Rejected manuscripts returned if author requests (with s.a.e.)

Contributors

Contributors to recent issues have included many distinguished writers on Wilde, among them Anne Clark Amor, Simon Callow, Anya Clayworth (the Reviews Editor), Terry Eagleton, Nicholas Frankel, Jonathan Fryer, Sir David Hare, Anthony Holden, Merlin Holland, Joy Melville, Sir John Mortimer, Douglas Murray, Christopher Nassaar, Horst Schroeder, Matthew Sturgis and Thomas Wright.

The Wildean warmly welcomes contributions both from established writers and from new writers.

Intentions:

The Society's newsletter–Intentions–is published about six times a year. Edited by Michael Seeney, it gives information about the Society's forthcoming events, and details of public performances of Wildëan interest. New publications are noted–these may also be the subject of full reviews in The Wildean. Intentions also regularly prints illustrated reports of Oscar Wilde Society events. The most recent was no. 46, published in October 2006 (we regret the error that ascribed no 45 to August 2005 in our last issue: this should of course have been August 2006).

The Wildean Tables of Contents.

THE OSCHOLARS has since we began published the Table of Contents for each new issue of The Wildean, and will continue to do so; in the months when there was no new issue, we published the Table from one or more of the earlier numbers. Twenty-seven editions of The Wildean have now been published. Contents of the whole set is published as a combined list of Tables of Contents on its own webpage. The order is alphabetical: author, then of article, with a link to it from each new issue of THE OSCHOLARS. This is by way of clicking on The Wildean logo, below. It can also be reached by a link from http://www.oscarwildesociety.co.uk/publications.html. On this page can also be found the ToC of the Wild about Wilde newsletter, compiled for THE OSCHOLARS by its editor and publisher Carmel Mc Caffrey.

A short descriptive piece by Donald Mead about each issue of The Wildean was published with the ToCs in THE OSCHOLARS and a table indicating in which issue these are to be found is given with The Wildean’s combined Table of Contents. We will now resume this practice.

The Wildean No. 29 was issued in July 2006 and fully covered in our October issue. Here is the summary provided by the Editor for The Wildean No. 26 January 2005.

The drawing of ‘Little Mr. Bouncer’ that Oscar Wilde scratched on the glass of a window in his rooms at Magdalen College was long thought to be lost. The pieces of the window including the drawing have however survived, and Society members saw them on their last visit to Magdalen. The drawing is reproduced in The Wildean with an article by Peter Vernier. There is a striking resemblance between photographs of Oscar’s friend Willie ‘Bouncer’ Ward and drawings by ‘Cuthbert Bede’ of his fictional undergraduate character ‘Mr Bouncer’.

Other articles include ‘Leonard Smithers and the Decadents’ by James G. Nelson, ‘Oscar Wilde: Liberal Martyr?’ by Jonathan Fryer, ‘Waugh on the Wilde Side’ by Peter Rowland, Ella Hepworth Dixon & Oscar Wilde’ by Valerie Fehlbaum, ‘A Dickens of a Wilde Paper’ by Karen Sasha Tipper, ‘Oscar Wilde in Prison’ by Carol Schnitzer, ‘Oscar and the ‘Dismal Science’ by Sir Alan Peacock, and ‘Imagining Salomé’ by Jeff Fendall.

Anya Clayworth reviews Michael Diamond’s Victorian Sensation, Or the Spectacular, the Shocking and Scandalous in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Frederick S. Roden’s Oscar Wilde Studies in the Palgrave Advances series.

Jonathan Fryer reviews the musical Oscar Wilde, Michael Seeney examines Matt Cook’s London and the Culture of Homosexuality and Trevor Fisher considers Lord Alfred Douglas: A Plea and a Reminiscence by Caspar Wintermans.

Membership form (copy, paste and print)

The Oscar Wilde Society, 100 Peacock Street Gravesend, Kent DA12 1EQ, England, with a cheque drawn on a British bank, payable to The Oscar Wilde Society.

Individual subscription(UK) is £20 and household membership £25.

The rates for overseas membership are £23 (European postal area) and £28(Rest of the World).

We can also accept (in cash, not by cheque) €35 Euros (for Europe) or$45 US dollars (for USA). We welcome payment by standing order; for details, please send an s.a.e.

Your details: (please use BLOCK CAPITALS)

Name................................................................................................................................................................

Address............................................................................................................................................................

Postcode ................……................................. E-mail …………………………………………...

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TO 12/06

More information about the Oscar Wilde Society and details of membership may be obtained from Vanessa Harris, the Hon. Secretary (see below).

For more information about (and for) The Wildean (including availability of previous issues) and Intentions, please contact Donald Mead (see below).

2. La Société Oscar Wilde

This was founded in Paris in January 2006 by Emmanuel Vernadakis, D.C. Rose, Danielle Guérin and Lou Ferreira as the French branch of The Oscar Wilde Society, which all are urged to join. Its activities so far have included arranging group visits to Wilde productions and the creation of a bimestrial bulletin, called rue des beaux arts, of news, reviews and articles concerning Wilde and his French associates. At the moment its coverage is chiefly confined to metropolitan France, Wallonie and Suisse Romane, but it is aimed at French speakers everywhere, and it is hoped that readers of THE OSCHOLARS will draw this to the attention of colleagues in Departments of French who teach the literature of the fin-de-siècle. Membership is free from melmoth.paris@gmail.com and information about rue des beaux arts (which accepts articles in English as long as they have a bearing on Wilde in France or Wilde’s French circles, influence etc) can be obtained from danielle.guerin@radiofrance.com. Its archives are housed with those of THE OSCHOLARS at www.oscholars.com. From time to time articles from rue des beaux arts will be translated into English and published in THE OSCHOLARS.

The December issue is now on line.

3. The Oscar Wilde Society of America

Anyone interested in the OWSoA can make contact via the elegantly-designed web page http://www.owsoa.org/ or even http.owsoa.org. (thus: without the www.) This has replaced the former http://www.indstate.edu/humanities/owsoa.htm. Other contact addresses are below.

<< The Oscar Wilde Society of America is an academic and literary society founded in 2002 to promote the study, understanding, and dissemination of research about Oscar Wilde and his times from the American perspective.

We are especially engaged in fostering a wider awareness of Oscar Wilde's 1882 American lecture tour, and the artists, educators, and other people he met on his tour across the continent. >>

The officers of the Society were formerly given as

Marilyn Bisch, President, e-mail: mbisch@indstate.edu (now replaced by) marilyn@owsoa.org.

Richard Freed, Treasurer, English Department; Case Annex 488, Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, Kentucky 40475. e-mail Richard.Freed@eku.edu

John B Thomas III, Secretary; Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

The names of Professor Freed and Dr Thomas no longer appear, but there is a new name:

Dr. Donald Jennermann, Corresponding Secretary, OWSOA, University Honors Program, 424 North 7th Street, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN 47809 USA.

While the site is not at the moment being updated, it remains a valuable resource. An important feature is a well-designed and accurate Calendar of Wilde's engagements in America, edited by Marilyn Bisch. This can be found at http://owsoa.org/library/libraryhome.htm, replacing its earlier site at http://www.indstate.edu/humanities/owsoacalendar.htm.

4. Project Oscar Wilde

This is the organisation, chaired by Heather White, which arranged the annual Oscar Wilde Weekend in Enniskillen, held each year in June. A report of the 2003 event was published in our July issue that year, but the website address no longer functions and we can find no recent news.

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