An Electronic Journal for
the Exchange of Information
on Current Research,
Publications and Productions
concerning
Oscar Wilde and His Circles
Vol. I No.
2
July 2001
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The first issue of THE OSCHOLARS was very well received by the academic community. Subscriptions have now reached 186 in sixteen countries, the majority in one or other of over a hundred universities or university colleges. I am very grateful for this reception of an untried idea, and I should like to thank especially those who have suggested improvements and additions: these I will faithfully execute up to the capability of my equipment and my expertise in using it. These and corrections are very welcome indeed.
Nothing in THE OSCHOLARS© is copyright to the Journal unless indicated by ©, and the usual etiquette of attribution will doubtless be observed. Please feel free to re-format it, print it, store it electronically whole or in part, copy and paste parts of it, and (best of all) forward it to colleagues.
Names emboldened in the text below are those of subscribers to THE OSCHOLARS, who may be contacted through Melmoth@aliceadsl.fr
D.C.
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2. 'Queer
Men: Historicising Queer Masculinities, 1550-1800' |
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2. A Bibliographical Note on the Oxford
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I. Wilde on the Curriculum
As part of THE OSCHOLARS aim of being a journal of record, I should very much like to publish notices of Wilde on the curriculum, and ask you kindly to send me news of this if you will (handbag@aliceadsl.fr). The more detail the better.
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II. News from Subscribers
1. Publications and Papers
Uwe Böker (Technical University of Dresden) has kindly allowed us to print the preface to Processes Of Institutionalisation: Case Studies In Crime, Prison, and Censorship, Eds. Uwe Böker and Julie Hibbard, Essen: Die Blaue Eule 2001. Isbn 3-89206-073-8.
'The present collection of four essays grew out of a special workshop and series of papers on the relationship between law and literature at the Oscar Wilde Conference in Dresden 31st August - 3rd September 2000. The workshop and the papers in turn are part of ongoing research on processes of institutionalisation and historical change that is undertaken by the Sonderforschungsbereich 537, and especially one of the sub-projects, 'Circulation of Legal Norms and Values in British culture from 1700 to 1900.' To the three papers by Prof. Kirby Farrell (University of Amherst, Massachusetts, USA), Prof. Ron Griffin (Ronald C. Griffin, Washburn University School of Law, Topeka, Kansas, USA) and Dr. Anna-Christina Giovanopoulos (SFB 537, TU Dresden, Germany), has been added another introductory one by the Dresden organizer of the conference on Oscar Wilde, Prof. Uwe Böker.
'In his essay, Prof. Böker looks into the concept of institutionalisation, making use of previous theoretical endeavours especially by Karl-Siegbert Rehberg (1994), who defines 'institutions' as social rules and regulations in which, by means of symbolizations or certain leading concepts ('Leitideen'), the underlying principles and legitimacy of a given order are made manifest. Institutions make available relatively permanent and binding norms and values, at the same time mediating between personal and social structures. It is by symbolically embodying or incarnating a given order and its claims of legitimacy that institutions transcend immediate reality in respect to situation, time, place, role patterns or worlds of existence ('Lebenswelten'). Social groups, by institutionalising norms and values, aim at legitimising control, power, hegemony or sovereignty by referring to constructions of ultimately fictive constructions of order.
'As is shown in Prof. Böker's paper, legal norms, such as ecclesiastical indictments for 'sodomy,' were taken over by the state during the sixteenth century in order to regulate the boundaries between state and church. It was after a period of far-reaching social and political instabilities that, at the end of the seventeenth century, the civil society of the emerging sphere took over the function of regulating society on the basis of voluntarist and participatory ideas that did not intrude into the private sphere of the individual. Legal norms and values were distributed by means of exemplary punishments that were based on rituals and ceremonies within a basically deferential society. The second half of the eighteenth century, however, witnessed the birth of a movement that aimed at reforming the criminal by means of incarceration and by overseeing his moral regeneration. Although the second half of the nineteenth century saw a renewal of the voluntarist reform spirit still very much dominant in the public sphere, the state ultimately took over the supervision and control of 'criminal' behaviour, as can be seen in section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act that led to the downfall of Oscar Wilde. Prof. Böker's paper thus demonstrates the shifting boundaries between the state, civil society and the individual that were regulated by means of institutionalised norms and values that in turn helped to shape norms and values of the institutions of law and law enforcement.
'In his essay Prof. Kirby Farrell is relating the Wilde trials and the moral panic at the end of the nineteenth century to the Victorian preoccupations with psychic injury and trauma. These in turn were, according to his interpretation, the outcome out of a wide-spread sense of social inequalities and insecurities that made competition for status and belonging and challenges to conventional sexuality appear more dangerous than ever before, especially since a traditional institution such as church could offer only limited help. This situation forced 'the patient,' according to Prof. Farrell, to look to the law to restore order outside and inside the injured self. Thus, legislation based on the concept of psychic injury, e.g. in cases of real trauma after serious railway accidents, opened up private experience to intrusion by the courts. This was obviously the case with section 11 of the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act and the indictment of 'acts of gross indecency' which is another symptom of the increasing attention to inner life. According to this view, the prosecutor became policeman and doctor, seeking to punish 'indecency' and healing 'shocked' sensibilities.
'Medical and judicial monitoring of morality,' according to Prof. Farrell,' were part of a larger concern with surveillance. As Foucault pointed out, social science sought to catalog and quantify social behavior, and in some ways the central project of psychoanalysis was to overcome patients' resistance and peer into the innermost recesses of self. The drive to control suspicious inner life is epitomized in society's use of incarceration. [...] It is tempting to conclude that the indecency law's invasion of private space is a sign that the Victorian system of elite social control grew less effective as conditions changed toward the end of the century, so that the authorities became more inclined to intrude, often through professional surrogates, into psychic life. The near-hysterical public reaction to his conviction implicitly recognized and reproved this deeper, aggressive motivation.' Prof. Farrell is thus interpreting official discourses of late Victorian times as manifestations of deeper psychic preoccupations and traumata that demanded for some sort of help. Help was given in the form of institutionalising new forms of legislating and 'medical' overseeing, sanctioning the intrusion into the inner life of the 'patient'.
Ronald C. Griffin is looking at the historical material relating to the Wilde trials and their cultural contexts from the point of view of a North American Professor of Law who is currently teaching at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. It is true that English common law was taken to the American colonies in 1607 with the first settlers in Virginia, and the political independence of the colonies the English common law became the fundamental jurisprudence of the new states. This fact explains that there are a great number of similarities between U.S. and British judicial ideas and legal definitions, as distinct from the civil law systems of Continental European nations and their different sources of law and procedures. Nevertheless, obvious dissimilarities since the end of the nineteenth century are the outcome of ongoing processes of juridification within modern societies. Taking into account the inevitability of changes and the ever-increasing systematisation of laws and procedures it is indeed tempting to look at Oscar Wilde's trials from the point of view of legal practices as they are institutionalised in present-day U.S.A. and practised by someone like the author himself. Thus, after looking into the trials and the publicity spawned by scandal-mongering journalism, some of Prof. Griffin's conclusions are: 'An American lawyer would list jury nullification, prejudicial pretrial publicity, prosecutorial misconduct, pervasive social bias, bias from the bench, fair trial, privacy, and personality.' As this list makes clear, Prof. Griffin is not naïvely taking a present-day point of view, but he is, in the first half of his essay, looking into the cultural and political context surrounding the trials, the relationship between the author Oscar Wilde and his society whose charges were: "First, Wilde exploited working class men. Second, Wilde created a false impression about his elite status. Third, Wilde capitalized upon his celebrity to win judicial sympathy. Fourth, Wilde was a purveyor of dangerous ideas. Fifth, Wilde used Catholicism [...] to combat the excesses of Protestantism. Sixth, Wilde acted effeminate. Seventh, Wilde was a homosexual. Eighth, Wilde was a sodomite. Ninth, Wilde committed a misdemeanor offense under the law." Thus, Prof. Griffin relates societal discourses and institutionalisations of social norms and values representing the outer legal culture of Great Britain at the end of the nineteenth century with institutionalized legal norms and practices of the inner legal culture, criticising both from a contemporary vantage point.
'In her paper, Dr. Anna-Christina Giovanopoulos is looking at a different form of the state's intrusion into the privacy of the individual sphere, that is, by means of censorship. The publication of literature was in the former GDR made subject to a highly formalised licencing process (Druckgenehmigungsverfahren). One should, however, remember that the system that evolved since the 1950s and lasted until 1989 was never a subsystem based on the state's power apparatus, neither was it codified in the constitution. It grew out of power struggles of various institutions, and was "dependent less on written laws and regulations than on the negotiations between the various actors within the social subsystem literature who could use their symbolic and political capital to dominate these negotiations." It thus becomes clear in her analysis that the theory of institutionalisation has to distinguish between material organisations (institutions in the old sense) and the institutionalised norms, values, orientations, attitudes, or mentalities that are the non-material equivalents of organisational structures (although not in a one-to-one relationship).
'In order to define or re-define a given literary text it was important for authors and publishers to be aware of the collectively shared and institutionalised set of concepts and the permanently valorized orientations and norms. By means of using concepts like 'humanism' or 'progress' that served as legitimisation strategies it was possible to promote texts which otherwise would have been considered as oppositional to the official ideology.
'In making use of the censorship decisions, which are collected in the Federal Archives in Berlin, Dr. Giovanopoulos is able to show how texts by a bourgeois and decadent author like Oscar Wilde were nevertheless published in translation in the former GDR. It is interesting to see that English scholars took part in the publishing process as editors, translators and authors of the introductions, but also by writing evaluations of texts that were to be published." Academic capital transferred into symbolic capital in the literary institutions provided a text with authority. The more problematic a text appeared the more important was the contribution by the evaluator and author of the preface or afterword."
'In the beginning interpretations of Wilde were quite varied. What happened "within the literary subsystem was that the established concepts were used to mark the acceptance of the hegemony of the political subsystem while at the same time the literary subsystem became more functionally differentiated, more specialised and professional." Dr. Giovanopoulos thus succeeds in analysing various forms of censorship as well as self-censorship.'
Nicholas Frankel (Virginia Commonwealth University) is giving a paper on 'The Typewritten Self: Media Technology and Identity in Wilde's De Profundis' at the Conference 'Re-Ma(r)king the Text', University of St Andrew's, 18th to 21st July. At the same conference Anya Clayworth (University of St Andrew's) is giving a paper on 'The Happy Prince and Other Tales: Oscar Wilde and his Illustrators' [Information kindly supplied by Dr Clayworth http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_se/mtext.html]
Joy Melville writes 'The unabridged Mother of Oscar is now on what is called 'Clipper Audio' (all 11 cassettes of it!). Narrated by Patricia Gallimore. ISBN 1 84197 155 3. Contact W.F. Howes Ltd, Unit 3, Victoria Mills, Rothley, Leicester, LE7 7PJ. Telephone: 0116230 1144. (I don't know what the cost is, something horrific no doubt, but one could probably order it through a library?).'
v Joy Melville is the author of Mother of Oscar. W.F. Howes' e-mail address is sales@wfhowes.co.uk. Here one is referred to an American retailer, http://www.recordedbooks.com, and a purchase price of $98 is listed (rental $18.50). Product ID: H1149.
D.C. Rose (Goldsmiths College, London) writes 'My article "Oscar Wilde: Socialist or Snob?", analysing class feeling in the structure of language in The Picture of Dorian Gray, appears (somewhat malapertly edited) in the Spring/summer issue (no.21) of Times Change: Quarterly Political and Cultural Review (published in Dublin).
Marie-Noelle Zeender (University of Nice) writes 'My article '"Earnest, vous avez dit Ernest': Oscar Wilde et la 'différance'" will be published in Études Irlandaises this year.'
2. Work in Progress
Petra Dierkes-Thrun (University of Pittsburgh) writes 'My Ph.D. dissertation is tentatively entitled 'The Salome Theme in the Wake of Oscar Wilde: Rhetorical Formations of Gender in Modernity'. The dissertation analyses the immediate history and various selected adaptations and transformations of Wilde's Salome, including the performing arts, literature, and film, paying particular attention to intersections between aesthetic representations of female sexuality and male homosexuality in the twentieth century.'
Heike Haase (University of Paderborn) writes 'I would like to draw your attention to my Ph.D. thesis which will hopefully be finished by the end of this year so that it can be published sometime in 2002. I am working on the representation of Oscar Wilde in biofictional literature, concentrating on the reception of certain aspects of Wilde like the Irish Wilde or the homosexual Wilde. So far I found only two examples which fit into the category of Wilde as a husband and father. Do you know any titles there?'
Frederick Roden (University of Connecticut) writes ‘I'd very much like to request that others who might have an interest in Marc-André Raffalovich contact me. I've been working on Raffalovich and Gray and hope to pursue a project. fsroden@aol.com.’
v Frederick Roden's 'The Scarlet Woman' was published in: Carolyn Dever and others (edd.): Reading Wilde / Querying Spaces. New York: Fales Library 1995. His paper 'For the Love of Mary: Devotional Homoerotics in Victorian Women Writers' will be given at the Science Museum, London Sunday 15 July 2.10 pm - 4.00 pm as part of the Locating the Victorians Conference
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IV. Other News
1. The 1890s: An Interdisciplinary Conference
at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne 5th-7th July will host the following papers on Wilde:
Andrew Eastham (King's College, London): 'The Ideal Theatre of Ætheticism: Æsthetic Idealism in the prose criticism of Oscar Wilde and Arthur Symons';
Michele Mendelssohn (King's College, Cambridge): 'Henry James, Oscar Wilde and the House Beautiful';
Nicholas Shrimpton (Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford): ''Lane, you're a perfect pessimist': Pessimism and the English fin-de-siècle';
John Stokes (King's College, London): 'Peacocks and Pearls: Wilde and Bernhardt';
Shelagh Wilson (University of Northumbria): 'Transatlantic Art Interchanges: Oscar Wilde and the Home Arts'
Other papers include
'Monsters of their Organisation: developing the brain in the 1890s', by Lucy Bending (University of Reading);
'I have to keep my associations to myself: queer desire and devoted service in Henry James's Brooksmith and Melville's Billy Budd' by Denis Flannery (Leeds);
'Melanie Klein versus Max Nordau: Degeneration as Womb Envy in George Moore's 'John Norton'' by Ann Heilmann (University of Wales, Swansea).
Details at http://www.ncl.ac.uk/english/colloquia/conferences/the1890s.htm.
2. 'Queer Men: Historicising Queer Masculinities, 1550-1800'
is the title of a conference taking place at University College Dublin on Saturday 21st July. This is a project of the Department of English and the Women's Education Research and Resource Centre at UCD, and co-organized by Katherine O'Donnell and Michael O'Rourke. It is a pity for our purposes that the period under discussion ends when it does, as the seriousness of its content would have been a valuable contextfor this aspect of Wildean research. For this reason, I list the papers:
Jody Greene (University of California, Santa Cruz): 'Transgender Translation and Neoclassical Castration: (Per)Versions of Sappho, 1711-1713'
Robert Tobin (Whitman College, Washington): 'Masculine Queers: Classicism, Storm and Stress, and 'Virile' Greek Love'
Randolph Trumbach (Baruch College, CUNY): 'The Heterosexual Man in the Eighteenth Century and his Queer Interactions'
George Haggerty (University of California, Riverside): 'Male Love and Friendship in the 18th Century'
George Rousseau (De Montfort University): 'Homoplatonic, Homodepressed, Homomorbid': the Genesis of the Gay Patient in the Early Modern Period'
Jeffrey Masten (Northwestern University): 'Histories of the Language: Queer Philology, Queer History'
Alan Stewart (Birkbeck): 'Queer Men/Homosexuals in History'
Mario DiGangi (Lehman College, CUNY.): 'Un-Queering the Renaissance'
Nick Radel (Furman University, South Carolina): 'The 'Voluntary Prostitute': Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Satire and the Castlehaven Case Revisited'
Alan Bray (Birkbeck):'Catholicism, the Family and Friendship: A Rite for Blessing Friendshipin Traditional Christianity'
For full details including biographies of the speakers see http://www.ucd.ie/~werrc/queermen.html.
3. Locating the Victorians.
Conference at the Science Museum, London, 12th to 15th July.
(http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/collections/research/victorians/programme.asp)- is an enormous undertaking with seven parallel strands divided into twenty panels. These, however, include no papers specifically on Wilde, who, indeed, is only referred to fleetingly in two of the abstracts.
- and for the record:
Douglas Murray's Bosie: a Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas has been reviewed by Alan Hakim in Mixed Moss, the journal of the Arthur Ransome Society. It will be recalled that Ransome's little book on Wilde occasioned a libel suit by Lord Alfred, and a review from the Ransome side is a useful source. http://www.sndc.demon.co.uk/tars.htm. [Information kindly supplied by Mr Hakim]
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V. Notes and Queries
1. A Bibliographical Note on Richard Ellmann
Colin Smythe writes
'Your comment about Richard Ellmann's book Four Dubliners, "it is quite notable how often Ellmann reprinted the same piece" seems to imply that he was responsible for each and every printing, but it is probable that he signed three contracts at most, and possibly only two.
'1) The four lectures were given at the Library of Congress (under the auspices of the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund), who first published them separately (the Joyce in 1982 under the title "James Joyce's Hundredth Birthday: Side and Front Views", and the Wilde one in 1984 as "Oscar Wilde at Oxford"), before the Library brought them together and published them as a single volume in 1986, by which time Ellmann had revised the lectures for publication in the collection and changed the title of the Joyce essay to "James Joyce In and Out of Art". They were for sale by "the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office".
'2) Ellmann had originally planned to have the Wilde biography published by Oxford University Press, but he became dissatisfied with them, and went to Hamish Hamilton (who had just been bought by Penguin) where a deal was struck. He also licensed the UK book rights (including paperback rights) in Four Dubliners to Hamish Hamilton who published the first UK hardcover edition in 1987. Standard procedure would be for the sublicensed paperback to be published 12 months after hardcover publication, in this case by Sphere under their Cardinal imprint.
'3) Braziller were obviously licensed as the US trade publisher and published their edition in August 1987. They did not find a paperback publisher or did not choose to sell paperback rights, or issue a paperback edition themselves. It is possible that Hamilton had acquired world rights in the lectures and also licensed Braziller, but without checking with the publishers this is mere surmise.
Footnote: Sphere ceased publishing in 1992 and its titles were acquired by Little, Brown & Co. The name no longer exists even as an imprint and is now only a vague memory on the publishing scene.
v Colin Smythe is the publisher of C. George Sandelescu: Rediscovering Oscar Wilde. The Princess Grace Library Volume 8. Colin Smythe Ltd, Gerrards Cross (England) 1994. Full list at http://www.colin-smythe.com
2. A Bibliographical Note on the Oxford Edition.
Donald Mead suggests that 'Oscholars may be interested in the following item that appeared in issue 13 (March 2001) of Intentions - the Newsletter of the Oscar Wilde Society.
'The first volume in the OUP Complete Works, issued in November 2000, was Poems and Poems in Prose. We asked Frances Whistler, Editor at Oxford University Press, about the plans for the edition, and she informs us:
'"The future volumes are listed below. The next one for delivery is likely to be The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I would expect to publish in summer 2002: several others are pretty far advanced, and I would expect to publish at least one volume the following year, and the remainder during the following 6-8 years. I'm sorry I can't give you more exact dates at present: as you can imagine, editions of this sort take a long time to prepare, and necessarily have to be overseen by the same general editors (themselves involved in particular volumes), so it isn't possible to move with enormous rapidity. However, it's an edition of which we are very proud, and we will certainly be moving it forward as steadily as can be managed.
'"For your information, the volume-numbers will be given to the volumes as they appear: where there are numbers below it merely indicates two volumes containing material from the same genre."
0 19 8119577 Joseph Donohue: Plays i
0 19 8119585 Joel Kaplan: Plays ii
0 19 8187726 Ian Small & Joseph Bristow: The Picture of Dorian Gray
0 19 8119593 Ian Small: Shorter Fiction
0 19 8119615 Josephine Guy: Criticism i
0 19 8119623 Ian Small: Criticism ii
0 19 811964X John Stokes & Russell Jackson: Reviews i
0 19 8119631 John Stokes & Russell Jackson: Reviews ii
'"Incidentally, we have issued Poems and Poems in Prose without a dust jacket, and it's now our policy to do so for books of this sort whose market is almost exclusively to academic libraries (having discovered that librarians routinely remove the jackets on receipt of the book). We do, however, continue to jacket multi-volume editions where the earlier volumes were jacketed, for the sake of uniformity."'
v Donald Mead is Editor of The Wildean
3. The Hôtel d'Alsace
The following may not be as widely known as it should be:
Ethel Mannin: Privileged Spectator, A Sequel to 'Confessions and Impressions'. London: Jarrolds 1939.
p.39] Stayed at the Hôtel d'Alsace in 1930. 'I wrote most of Commonsense and the Child in the little room of the Oscar Wilde 'suite' of two rooms. I also wrote in this room a number of stories which were collected into my second volume of short stories Dryad. The Wilde rooms are described in a story called 'Maiden Lady'.'
In its modern glory, the hotel can be 'visited' at http://www.l-hotel.com/index.html.
4. The Bunbury Club
Lieke Melkert writes from Amsterdam 'In the first 'Oscholars' there was a question in Section VI (Web Foot Notes) about a site in Dutch named The Bunbury Circle.
'This is what I found: In 1979, The Bunbury Circle began as a students' club for gentlemen in the university city of Leyden. They were looking for a name for their club, and just then, one of the founders had read The Importance of Being Earnest. They mention on their web site (http://www.bunburycircle.com/ which has several references to Oscar Wilde) that in this book there is a story about a party dandy from London, who, as an excuse for chasing women unnoticed, always said that he paid a visit to his sick friend Bunbury. He even managed to turn this occupation into a verb, and in the circle of his most intimate friends, he declared himself a follower of 'Bunburyism'. That suited the gentlemen from Leyden down to the ground. Therefore, they founded the Bunbury Circle with a lot of activities with English names such as: the "Shillingdiner" and the 'Bunbury-dropping' on the 'Bunburynight'. To be admitted, the gentlemen had to catch a shilling thrown at them during the 'Shillingdiner'. After 1994, this did not work anymore. In 1991, the club of the Bunbury Circle Reunionists was established to keep the good old times alive. However, at this moment only two members of this last club can be found on the web site page.'
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VI. Productions during July 2001
Australia
An Evening with Oscar Wilde: Fairy Tales in the Garden will be held in the University of New South Wales EcoLiving Centre Permaculture Community Garden (rear of 12 Arthur St, Randwick, Sydney) on the 7th July. Readings will include The Happy Prince, The Selfish Giant and The Nightingale and the Rose. Performers have been drawn from the UNSW staff and student community and beyond: well-known actors Tony Barry and Barbara Wyndon will also take part in the performance. Musicians and Iris hdancers will lead the audience in Celtic dancing in the interval. [Information kindly sent by Ray Goodlass.]
Austria
The Portrait of Dorian Gray 'adapted from Oscar Wilde's novel by Glen Walford' is at the English Theatre, Josefstrasse, Vienna, until 14th July. [NB The title is not my misprint. Ed.]
http://www.englishtheatre.at/DORIAN/Dorianmain.html
| Dorian Gray |
Sebastian Bates |
| Lord Henry Wotton |
Stephen Mapes |
| Basil Hallward/Alan Campbell |
Warren Kimmel |
| Isaacs/Lord Narborough |
David Ericsson |
| Sibyl / Lady Narborough/ Barmaid / Hetty Merton |
Elizabeth O'Brien |
| James Vane |
Callum Arnott |
Directed by Glen Walford; Set design by Claire Lyth; Lighting design by Mark Dymock; Music composed, arranged and directed by Sebastian Bates.
England
Dorian Gray (director Robin Phillips), Theatre Royal, Windsor, 10th to 28th July
The Importance of Being Earnest (director, Matthew Smith), The Watermill Theatre, Newbury, to 21st July www.watermill.org.uk
The Importance of Being Earnest (Cloister Productions, director David Clarke), Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, 3rd to 7th July
The Importance of Being Earnest (Lipservice Theatre Company, director Lawrence Till), Palace Theatre, Watford, to 7th July
To Meet Oscar Wilde (Consenting Adults Company), Emery Theatre, Annabel Close, London E14 6DP. This is described thus: To Meet Oscar Wilde was printed on invitations for Victorian soirees. In this fascinating play we see the great British Playwright Oscar Wilde giving a dissertation on his life at a lecture in Paris in 1899. He is supported by his friends Lord Evelyn and Penelope Dyall, an actress. The audience is taken on a journey through Wilde's life from childhood to the day he is released from prison. 4th July to 6th July.
Finland
Strauss' Salome will be performed at the Savolinna Festival on 31st July, directed by Sir Peter Hall and conducted by Christopher Harlan.
France
The Importance of Being Earnest (as 'Il est important d'être Aimable', directed by Astride Couvois and Ivola Pounembetti) a tthe Comédie de Paris, rue Fontaine, Paris 9, to 31st July. http://www.comediedeparis.fr/comedie.htm.
Germany
Strauss' Salome will be performed in Nürnberg (Nuremberg) on the 13th July, directed by Stephen Lawless.
Isle of Man
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Keith Drinkel, Performer), Gaiety Theatre, Douglas, 25th July.
- and for the record:
The Corin Redgrave/Merlin Holland/Trevor Nunn De Profundis was produced at The Playhouse, Oxford, England, 26th to 30th June.
Corin Redgrave in De Profundis
The Remarkable Piety of the Infamous: A Serious Play for Frivolous People, Peter Dunne's play about Wilde in Paris that was premièred in London last year, was produced at the Buffalo Ensemble Theatre, Buffalo NY, 12th to 29th April, directed by Robert Waterhouse with Peter Dunne as Wilde.
The Importance of being Earnest was produced at Charles Sturt University's theatre, the Riverina Playhouse, in downtown Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia, from 31st May to 16th June. It was directed by Ray Goodlass, and featured a cast of Second Year student actors from our BA in Acting for Screen and Stage program, and designed by Third Years from their BA in Acting for Screen and Stage. [Information kindly provided by Mr Goodlass].
An Ideal Husband (directed by Mark Greenstreet) was produced at the English Theater, Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, 16th March to 12th May.
Contributions to this section of THE OSCHOLARS from anywhere in the world will be very welcome indeed.
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VI. Web Foot Notes
A monthly look at websites (contributions welcome).
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Bosie
is a more than usually trivial chat site instigated by somebody
calling himself Bosie Douglas. One can imagine what Lord
Alfred might have said to that. Its aim is 'To discuss
Bosie as a man seperate [sic] from Oscar Wilde, and to appreciate
him as the poet he was'. Founded on 3rd November 1999, it carries
twenty-one messages (nine this year, none last year), many of
which are about the members' astrological signs, and none about
poetry. It now has six members, one calling herself Isola Wilde.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LordAlfredDouglas
is an enterprise that seems to be run on altogether more serious
lines. Founded on 3rd January 2001, it already has thirty-nine
members (there is always some overlap in membership between
these different groups). Of the thirty-seven messages
on the site, however, thirty-four were posted in the first three
months. Both these sites suggest that interest in Douglas,
distinct from Wilde, is fairly marginal.
http://www.mastertexts.com/Wilde_Oscar/Index.htm
provides texts on-line of An Ideal Husband, Lady Windermere's
Fan, The Picture of Dorian Gray and A Woman of No Importance.
http://www.besuche-oscar-wilde.de
is a site which contains nearly all Wilde's work in German,
the rest in English.
http://authorsdirectory.com/cgi-bin/search2000/iforum.cgi?forum=Oscar_Wilde&action=list
is another Oscar Wilde discussion Forum ,on which there are
no messages.
The two sites dealing with Symposia at Magdalen College,
Oxford, http://www.wildesymposium.org.uk and
www.wildeliterarytrust.org.uk,
reported on in last month's Oscholars, remain unaltered.
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VII. Some sell and others
buY
Books in print mentioned in THE
OSCHOLARS can be ordered from John Wyse Jackson
of Sandoe Books books@jsandoe.demon.co.uk.
v
John Wyse Jackson is editor of Aristotle at Afternoon
Tea: the Rare Oscar Wilde. London: Fourth Estate 1991;
paperback edition retitled Uncollected Oscar Wilde
1995
On 3rd July Christie's are selling at their King Street,
London, branch a copy of Jim Dine: After Oscar Wilde, The
Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Petersburg Press 1968.
Lot Number 122 Sale Number 6468. It is estimated to
go for £2,000-£3,000. This lot consists of lithographs
and etchings in colours, on Arches, title, text, justification
and the complete set of twelve lithographs, with the additional
suite of six lithographs and four etchings, the justification
signed in blue crayon and numbered 18/100 from the Edition
C (plus fifteen artist's proofs in this edition, the total
edition was 500), the etchings with margins, the lithographs
printed to or close to the sheet edges, each plate of the
suite signed in pencil and numbered, the plates in the book
in very good condition, the plates of the suite with pale
discoloration at the sheet edges, otherwise generally in very
good condition, the book bound in red snakeskin simili-leather
with title printed in black on front, the suite loose in boards,
within portfolio also in red snakeskin simili-leather with
red multiple heart, the multiple signed and dated in felt-tip
pen, numbered 18/100 on a label on the reverse, the portfolio
and the multiple generally in very good condition. Dimensions
overall 470 x 340 mm.
[Information accessed from http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/search/advancedsearch.asp]
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VIII. A Wilde July
Anniversaries: Whistler was born on the 10th (1834),
as was Proust (1871); Dolly Wilde was born on the 11th (1895);
Florence Balcombe on the 17th (1858), Lovis Corinth (who
designed the sets for Salome for Max Reinhardt) on
the 21st (1858), Shaw on the 26th (1856), Mary Anderson
(Wilde's intended Duchess of Padua) on the 28th (1859).
Beerbohm Tree died on the 2nd (1917), Whistler on
the 7th (1903), Corinth on the 17th (1924), Vincent O'Sullivan
on the 18th (1940), Charles Hawtrey on the 30th (1923).
Here is a Wilde Chronology for the month (additions welcome, of course). I have omitted the American lecture tour.
|
07 1877 |
Publication of Wilde's 'The Tomb of Keats' in The Irish Monthly |
| 07 1879 |
Wilde in Belgium with Rennell Rodd |
|
07 1883 |
Wilde moves into rooms at 9 Charles Street, Berkeley Square |
| 07 1883 |
Wilde lectures on America at the Prince's Hall, Piccadilly |
| 07 1886 |
Publication of Wilde's 'Keats's 'Sonnet on Blue'' in the Century Guild Hobby Horse |
| 07 1890 |
Wilde calls at the Gazette offices and protests to S.H. Jeyes about his review of Dorian Gray |
| 07 1890 |
Wilde calls at the Whitefriars Club; has long talk about Dorian Gray with Sidney Low |
|
07 1897 |
Whistler visits Dieppe and is seen passing by, but does not see, Wilde |
| 07 1898 |
Wilde leaves Nogent-sur-Marne |
| 07 1899 |
Wilde at Chennevières-sur-Marne |
| 07 1900 |
Wilde visits the Rodin Pavilion at the Exposition Universelle |
| 03 07 1892 |
Wilde takes the cure at Homburg, staying at 51 Kaiser-Friedrich Promenade |
| 03 07 1903 |
Wilde's creditors paid 13/4d in the £ |
| 04 07 1891 |
Wilde at the Crabbet Club |
| 04 07 1895 |
Wilde is transferred to Wandsworth |
| 05 07 1876 |
Wilde takes First in Mods |
| 05 07 1891 |
Wilde at the Crabbet Club |
| 06 07 1895 |
Mirbeau compares Wilde and Huysmans |
| 08 07 1890 |
Society of Authors Annual Dinner, Criterion Restaurant: Wilde present |
| 10 07 1883 |
Wilde lectures on 'Personal Impressions of America', Princes' Hall, London |
| 13 07 1887 |
Wilde & Constance give a party at Tite Street |
| 14 07 1888 |
Mr Gladstone writes to Wilde |
|
16 07 1879 |
Wilde publishes 'Queen Henrietta Maria' in The World |
| 17 07 1887 |
Wilde elected a Fellow of the Society of Authors |
| 17 07 1894 |
Wilde lunches at the Asquiths' |
|
19 07 1878 |
Wilde takes a First in Greats |
|
19 07 1884 |
Wilde and Constance at first night of 'Twelfth Night' (Irving, Ellen Terry, Rose Leclercq) |
| 20 07 1883 |
Wilde at a poetry recital. Also present Lady Wilde, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, Mary Endicott |
|
21 07 1888 |
Death of Mary Atkinson née Hemphill grandmother of Constance Wilde |
|
23 07 1887 |
Wilde and Constance at the Irving benefit, Lyceum Theatre |
|
24 07 1897 |
Wilde and Beardsley meet |
|
25 07 1888 |
Wilde at the Society of Authors 'Dinner for visiting American writers, Criterion Restaurant. He sits next to Lady Colin Campbell, and this was not a successful placement |
|
25 07 1888 |
Yeats visits Lady Wilde for the first time |
|
26 07 1881 |
Mr Gladstone writes to Wilde |
|
27 07 1894 |
Meeting between Wilde and George Ives |
|
28 07 1904 |
Vyvyan Wilde leaves Stonyhurst |
|
31 07 1892 |
Last night of Brookfield's 'The Poet& the Puppets', at the Comedy Theatre |
|
20 07 1909 |
Re-interment of Oscar Wilde at Père Lachaise |
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IX. The Oscar Wilde Society and
The WildEan.
We are very pleased to associate THE OSCHOLARS with the Oscar Wilde Society and its journal The Wildean, and are grateful for the welcome afforded to this venture by both the Secretary to the Society and the Editor of the journal. Fulfilling different purposes, the aims of the two are complementary. Contacts for both the Society and The Wildean are given below.
The Oscar Wilde Society is a literary society devoted to the congenial appreciation of Oscar Wilde. It is a non-profitmaking organisation which aims to promote knowledge, appreciation and study of Wilde's life, personality and works. It organises lectures, readings and discussions about Wilde and his works, visits to places in Great Britain and overseas associated with Wilde, an annual lunch in Oxford, and an annual Birthday Dinner at the Cadogan Hotel, London.
A newsletter - Intentions - is published about six times a year and gives information on forthcoming events, performances and publications, and reports on Society activities. The Society's journal - The Wildean - is published twice a year and contains features on a variety of subjects relating to Wilde, including articles, reviews, and accounts of Society events. It is a publication of permanent interest (MLA listed and indexed) and copies of all recent back issues are available at cover price, which includes postage in the UK.
New members are very welcome. The current annual individual subscription (UK) is £14 and household membership £20, payable on 1 January.
Future issues of THE OSCHOLARS will publish the Table of Contents for each new issue of The Wildean. When there is no new issue, we shall reprint the Tables of Contents from earlier issues until the whole set has been detailed.
Here is the information from the Editor of The Wildean about issue 17 (July 2000).
In her illustrated article, 'Wilde on Photographs', (Cornell University) transcribes, reproduces in facsimile, and proposes a dating sequence for four hitherto unpublished letters to an unidentified correspondent. The letters reveal Wilde's concern that if a photograph of him is to be published it should be 'something artistic' or, alternatively, that a portrait of him by Harper Pennington should be used. The article reproduce a little-known portrait which is identified here for the first time as having been prepared by Harper Pennington, and is likely to have been the 'artistic image' Wilde preferred.
In the same issue, Jonathan Fryer considers the bravery and the recklessness of Oscar Wilde and Robbie Ross in 'Taking on the Establishment', and Ernest Mehew writes an appreciation of the life and work of his friend, Sir Rupert Hart-Davis.
| Taking on the Establishment: The Diverse Strategies of Robbie Ross and Oscar Wilde. |
Jonathan Fryer |
| Wilde on Photographs: Four Unpublished Letter. |
Sandra F. Siegel |
| The King of Editors: Sir Rupert Hart-Davis. |
Ernest Mehew |
| Mother Love: Lord Alfred Douglas and Sibyl Queensberry. |
Julia Wood |
| Reviews |
|
| Bruce Bashford: Oscar Wilde: the Critic as Humanist; Mary Warner Blanchard: Oscar Wilde's America: Counterculture in the Gilded Age; Elizabeth Prettejohn: After the Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Aestheticism in Victorian England |
Anya Clayworth |
| Douglas Murray: Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas; Joseph Pearce: The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde. |
Donald Mead |
| Clare Elfman: The Case of the Pederast's Wife. |
Michael Seeney |
| Poems of Lord Alfred Douglas recited by Lord Gawain Douglas |
Donald Mead |
| An unforgettable operatic Salomé ('an electrifying interpretation by Christl Goltz') |
BindonRussell |
The more recent issues of The Wildëan are still available at cover price. The Wildean No. 17 (described above) is available at £5.00, and The Wildean No.18, (described in THE OSCHOLARS Vol I.1) at £4.50. These prices include P &P in the UK. Copies are available from Donald Mead - see below.
|
The Oscar Wilde Society may be contacted by writing to Vanessa Harris Hon. Secretary, The Oscar Wilde Society at 100 Peacock Street, Gravesend, Kent DA12 1EQ, England e-mail: vanessaharris@members.v21.co.uk The Wildean and Intentions may be contacted by writing to Donald Mead Chairman, The Oscar Wilde Society Editor, The Wildean & Intentions at 63 Lambton Road, London, SW20 0LW, England e-mail: donmead@wildean.demon.co.uk |
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