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Oscar Wilde

I love Pride

Life and death

Biographical films

• Oscar Wilde, 1960, black and white film, directed by Gregory Ratoff.
  • Robert Morley (Oscar Wilde)
  • Ralph Richardson (Queens Counsel, Sir Edward Carson)
• The Trials of Oscar Wilde, 1960, (called The Man with the Green Carnation, in the USA), based on John Fernald's play The Stringed Lute, and Montgomery Hyde's Trial of Oscar Wilde, directed by Ken Hughes.
  • Peter Finch (Oscar Wilde)
  • John Fraser (Alfred Douglas)
  • Lionel Jeffries (Marquess of Queensberry)
• Wilde, 1997.
  • Stephen Fry (Oscar Wilde)

Statue

• A fitting testament to Oscar Wilde: a monumental row over gay politics by David Lister and Paul Waugh in The Independent, 1st. December, 1998, page 1. "Oscar Wilde could almost be heard chuckling from the grave yesterday. On the 98th anniversary of his death, the playwright imprisoned for his homosexuality gained a strange and belated revenge on the British Establishment." "It was a day that saw - all in the cause of Oscar - Peter Mandelson's name raised in a discussion of homosexuality, this time by Yes, Minister actor Nigel Hawthorne, an embarrassed BBC interviewer attempting to shut Hawthorne up, and the openly gay Secretary of State for culture, Chris Smith, thanking Wilde for what he had done "for our community".
• It's got to go by Tom Lubbock in The Independent Tuesday Review, 1st. December, 1998, page 1. "Oscar Wilde deserved a monument fit for a hero of art, love and politics. Instead Maggi Hambling has sculpted a wilfully tacky, silly, Tussaudian tragedy." "The cause itself was right and good and overdue. There should certainly be a monument to Oscar Wilde in London, the scene of his triumphs and trials and fall. It should be a major monument."
• Nigel Hawthorne cut off by the BBC.

Work

• Ravenna, (a poem), 1878.
• Poems, 1881.
• The True Function and Value of Criticism; With Some Remarks on the Importance of Doing Nothing, 1890, in The Nineteenth Century, July, later published as The Critic as Artist, Part I.
• The True Function and Value of Criticism, second part, 1890, in The Nineteenth Century, September, later published as The Critic as Artist, Part II. "Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."
• The picture of Dorian Gray, 1891. "The mind of a thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value." Published in 1963 by Penguin, 248 pages, SBU Wandsworth Road Library Main Bookstock.
• Lady Windermere's Fan, 1893.
• Salomé, in French, 1893.
• A Woman of No Importance, 1894.
• Phrases and Philosophies for Use of the Young, 1894, in The Chameleon, December. "In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer."
• An Ideal Husband, 1895. LADY BASILDON: Ah! I hate being educated! MRS MARCHMONT: So do I. It puts one almost on a level with the commercial classes.
• The Ballad of Reading Gaol, 1898.
• The Importance of being Earnest, 1899.
  • LADY BRACKNELL: . . . I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing. Which do you know? JACK WORTHING (after some hesitation): I know nothing, Lady Bracknell. LADY BRACKNELL: I am pleased to hear it. I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.
  • Long-lost letter from Wilde proves that it could have been 'The Importance of Being George' by David Usborne in The Independent, 4th. December, 1999, page 5. "A private letter written by Oscar Wilde, probably in the summer of 1894, to George Alexander, an old friend and fan of the theatre, exposes the inspiration for the Irish-born playwright and aesthete's last comedic masterpiece,The Importance of Being Earnest- a desperate shortage of cash. The 16-page, hand-written letter is to be sold at Sotheby's in New York on Tuesday." "He tries to sell the play to Alexander, pleading: 'I am so pressed for money that I don't know what to do'." "And Wilde had already settled upon the main comedic premise of his work - the invention by Ashton (later Worthing) of an imaginary brother on whom his own rakish behaviour in London can be transposed - he had not, apparently, settled on the right name for him. In the letter the phantom sibling is George Ashton, not Earnest. Thus he almost gave us the play called The Importance of Being George."
• De Profundis, 1905.
• Plays, (1954), Penguin, SBU Library Main Bookstock 822.8. Contains Lady Windermere's Fan, A woman of no importance, An ideal husband, The importance of being Earnest, and Solomé.
• Poems and essays, (1956), 478 pages, SBU Library Main Bookstock 821.8
• The complete works of Oscar Wilde, (1966), Collins, 1216 pages, SBU Library Main Bookstock 822.89
• The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, edited by Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis, 2000, published by Fourth Estate, ISBN 1 85702 781
  • Supreme man of letters by Peter Ackroyd in The Times 2, 22nd. November, 2000, page 17. "The long serpentine of Oscar Wilde's career is traced here like some fiery scarlet thread - the poetry, the journalism, the essays, the plays and the prison cell."

Bibliography

• Beckman, K., (1977), "The happy prince", Kaye and Ward, ISBN 0718211642, SBU Library Teaching Practice Collection
• Tom Cowan, "Gay Men and Women Who Enriched the World"
• Rupert Croft-Cooke, (1967), "Feasting With Panthers"
• Rupert Croft-Cooke, (1972), "The Unrecorded Life of Oscar Wilde", W. H. Allen (hardback)
• Elliman and Roll, (1986), pages 214-215.
• Richard Ellmann, (1987), "Oscar Wilde", New York: Knopf
• Richard Ellmann, (1997), "Oscar Wilde", Film and TV tie-in edition, Penguin Books, 632 pages, ISBN 0-14-026501-5.
  • Importance of not being Salome by Steven Morris in The Guardian, 17th. July, 2000, page 6. "Over the years it has been used as evidence of a little known aspect of Oscar Wilde's flamboyant life story - that of his transvestite tendency. A photograph appears to show the writer as the biblical seductress Salomé, but now research suggests the figure is not Wilde but a female opera singer. The photograph appeared in an article on Wilde in the French newspaper Le Monde in 1987. In Richard Ellmann's biography it is captioned: Wilde in costume as Salomé - Collection Guillot de Saix Paris. The playwright's grandson Merlin Holland, has long doubted that it was Wilde, and has worked with a German scholar, Horst Schröder, to prove his theory. Mr Schröder discovered a photograph of Alice Guszalewicz, a Hungarian soprano who sang in the opera Salomé in Cologne in 1906. Her jewellery and clothing were almost identical to that of the Wilde figure. Mr Holland said: 'Whatever anyone has said about Oscar and his naughtiness, he wasn't the sort of person who would dress in women's clothes and have himself photographed.' Penguin, publisher of the Ellmann biography, is considering removing the image from future editions."
• Michael S. Foldy, (1997), "The trials of Oscar Wilde: deviance, morality, and late-Victorian society", Yale, 224 pages.
  • Wilde's first mistake was to take Queensberry to court. His second was to tell lies..., by Anthony Julius, in The Observer Review, 5th. October, 1997, page 15. "Wilde's own performance as a witness was sparkling at first, but then mendacious and ultimately pathetic. He should never have started legal proceedings, but then, what else could he have done? He couldn't live in peace in England without rebutting Queensberry; unable to rebut him, the only peace he found was in the isolation of an English jail."
• Rupert Hart-Davis, (1962), "The Letters of Oscar Wilde", London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 958 pages,SBU Library Main Bookstock 826.9
• Rupert Hart-Davis, (1985), "More Letters of Oscar Wilde", New York: Oxford University Press.
• Mark Hichens, (1999), "Oscar Wilde's Last Chance - The Dreyfus Connection", The Pentland Press, 204 pages, ISBN 1-85821-663-x (hardback).
  • Blurb: "Oscar Wilde came out of prison a broken man. There seemed no hope of reviving his spirit, of finding the spark that would once again set his genius ablaze. Yet when he came to Paris in 1898 an extraordinary opportunity presented itself. The city, the whole world of politics, fashion, society was in the grip of the Dreyfus Affair, the scandalous attempt to frame a Jewish army officer on charges of treason. One of Wilde's closest friends had been told the true secret of the plot and passed the information to Wilde in the hope of enlisting his scintilating gifts in its exposure. How this scheme backfired, how Wilde not only misplayed his hand but actually became the friend of the arch-villian of the piece, with results at first devastating to Dreyfus but ultimately to his persecutors, is the theme of this fascinating book."
• H. Jones, (1976), "The fairy stories of Oscar Wilde", Gollancz, 223 pages, ISBN 0575021705, SBU Library Teaching Practice Collection 398.21
• Moises Kaufman, (1998), "Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde", 143 pages.
• J. Laver, (1963), "Oscar Wilde", Longmans, SBU Library Main Bookstock 822.89 WIL
• Joy Melville, (1994), "Mother of Oscar: The Life of Jane Francesca Wilde", John Murray, 308 pages, ISBN 0-7195-5102 1 (hardback).
  • Blurb: "Lady Wilde was the linchpin of the Wilde family. Courageous and strong-minded, as a young woman she defied her Protestant family's pro-Union politics and, during the terrible days of the Great Famine, writing under the name of Speranza, she electrified Ireland with her passionate tirades in verse and prose against the English. When she married the brilliant eye and ear surgeon Dr William Wilde, later knighted by Queen Victoria, she transferred her loyalty to him and her children. At one point she bravely defended her husband in court in a libel case that was the sensation of Dublin and foreshadowed Oscar's own trial some thirty years later. Lady Wilde adored both her sons and in turn they adored her. Oscar was to compare her intellectually with Elizabeth Barrett Browning and historically with the revolutionary Madame Roland. Like Madame Roland, Lady Wilde, whose 'talk was like fireworks - brilliant, whinsical and flashy', held salons to which the literary world came and over which she presided with panache. Although Willie, her elder son, had been eclipsed by Oscar, her hopes for him were as high as for Oscar and indeed in 1879, when she joined her sons in London, Willie was thought to have a brilliant journalistic career ahead of him. In Mother of Oscar the complex relationship between Willie, Oscar and their mother is fully explained for the first time. Since her sons revered her as they did, Lady Wilde's influence over them was strong and they inherited both strengths and weaknesses from her. Witty, often outrageous, with very strong feminist views, she was a most memorable woman."
• H. Montgomery Hyde, (1962), "The Trials of Oscar Wilde", Dover Books.
• Sheridan Morley, (1997), "Oscar Wilde", Pavilion Books, 160 pages, ISBN 1862050341.
• Joseph Pearce, (2000), "The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde", HarperCollins, 301 pages.
  • 'Wilde at heart by Humphrey Carpenter in The Sunday Times Culture, 4th. June, 2000, pages 35-36. "... Joseph Pearce's The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde reads like a far too familiar tale, and Pearce constantly snipes at his predecessors, especially Richard Ellmann, whom Pearce thinks wrong in believing that Wilde had syphilis. He also makes much of Wilde's earliest heterosexual love affair, with a girl called Florence Balcombe, who seems to have inspired some surprisingly erotic verse, considering that they certainly did not go to bed together."
• B. Rathbone, (1955), "Fairy tales", Audiocassette: Caedmon, 1 cassette, mono, 45 mins, SBU Library Teaching Practice Collection 398.21 Read by B. Rathbone: "The happy prince", "The selfish giant", and "The nightingale and the rose".
• R. Rietty, (1973), "Fairy stories", vol. 1, Audiocassette: Kiddy Kassettes, 1 cassette, mono, 30 mins, SBU Library Teaching Practice Collection 398.21 Side 1: "The remarkable rocket".
• C. Robinson, (1977), "The happy prince and other tales", Pan, 136 pages, ISBN 033024857X, SBU Library Teaching Practice Collection 398.21
• Paul Elliott Russell, (1994), "The Gay 100"

Press cuttings

• Wilde's lost play reveals his torment by Nicholas Hellen in The Sunday Times, 6th. August, 2000, page 7. "An unfinished play by Oscar Wilde has been found by an amateur collector, providing fresh insights into the betrayal of his wife as he embarked on a destructive series of homosexual adventures. The plot for Wife's Tragedy was devised in August 1894 as Wilde juggled his duties to his wife and children on a holiday in Worthing, West Sussex, against his assignations with sailors and a newspaper delivery boy. The play will be discussed by scholars at a symposium at Magdalen College, Oxford, to be held in September to mark the centenary of his death. It will be attended by Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson. Neal Kydd, an amateur Wildean, located 52 handwritten pages of Wife's Tragedy in the W A Clark memorial library of the University of California." "Wilde opted to cash in on the idea for Wife's Tragedy, rather than complete it himself. He sold it to Frank Harris, who rewrote it and eventually staged it as Mr & Mrs Daventry."
• Study claims Wilde died of ear infection by Nigel Hawkes in The Times, 24th. November, 2000, page 10. "Oscar Wilde, who died 100 years ago in Paris, was the victim of an ear infection and not syphilis, as some biographers have claimed." "Ashley Robins and Sean Sellars, two South African doctors, of the University of Cape Town, say in The Lancet that the syphilis theory lacks supporting evidence, while there is strong evidence that Wilde had a serious ear infection. The first biographer to claim that Wilde had syphilis was Arthur Ransome in 1912. Richard Ellmann's 1987 biography supports the idea that Wilde caught the disease as an Oxford undergraduate and was afflicted by it until his death. Wilde family members have never accepted the diagnosis. During his imprisonment in Reading gaol between 1895 and 1897 he was examined by at least seven doctors and none of them mentioned it. Nor was there a decline in Wilde's mental sharpness up to the day of his death, as there would have been had he suffered from tertiary syphilis."
• Ear infection, not syphilis, carried Wilde to his grave by Jeremy Laurence in The Independent, 24th. November, 2000, page 5. "Writing in The Lancet, Dr Ashley Robbins and Professor Sean Sellars of the University of Cape Town say that a medical certificate detailing Wilde's treatment during his last days shows that he died of meningoencephalitis, a brain disease similar to meningitis caused by a chronic middle-ear infection. The certificate came to light when it was auctioned in 1982."
• Wilde died after radical surgery to cure longstanding ear disease by James Meikle in The Guardian, 24th. November, 2000, page 11. "Oscar Wilde suffered from a chronic ear disease that failed to respond to radical surgery carried out in a hotel bedroom in Paris, according to a study of events leading to his death in Paris 100 years ago next week." "His condition had nothing to do with syphilis, as Wilde biographers Arthur Ransome and Richard Ellmann have suggested, but stemmed from a cholosteotoma, a growth in the ear which corrodes the mastoid bone and leaves festering debris in the middle ear."
• The importance of being Merlin by Stephen Moss in The Guardian: G2, 24th. November, 2000, pages 4-5. An article about Merlin Holland, the grandson of Oscar Wilde, and his involvement in the centenary of his grandfather's death. "Holland's 21-year-old son, Lucian, studied classics at Magdalen, Oxford, where Wilde had himself been a brilliant classics scholar. When Lucian was allocated a room in 71 High Street, where Wilde had lived for a term, Holland thought the similarities were getting out of hand. 'I said to Lucian at the time: 'I don't give a damn about your sexuality, but for goodness sake keep out of the courts.' The coincidences had gone far enough'."
• The Picture of Dorian Gray is complete tosh by Geoffrey Wheatcroft in The Guardian: G2, 24th. November, 2000, pages 4-5. "Of all the 'ifs' of literary history, none is sadder than this: if only Oscar Wilde hadn't been brought down by malice and cruelty and his own recklessness, he might have lived to give us a half a dozen more 'Earnests&'."
• The importance of remembering Oscar by Simon Callow in The Times 2, 24th. November, 2000, page 9. "Goaded by extravagant claims that he was a social, moral, artistic and intellectual revolutionary, the detractors have hit out: he was vain, snobbish and pompous; he was intellectually thin and morally suspect; his self-induced trial and subsequent imprisonment have swollen his significance out of all proportion to his achievements. Those of us who love him must wryly admit that there is perhaps more than a modicum of truth in these accusations, but all this is beside the point. The single most consistent theme in Wilde's writing is his assertion of the primacy of personality, and it is as a personality that he triumphantly survives the erosion of time."
• Tape of Wilde reading ballad is a fake, says British Library by Robin McKie and Vanessa Thorpe in The Observer, 28th. January, 2001, page 5. "It was the most distinctive voice of the Victorian era: a languid drawl mixed with an Irish brogue that enunciated some of the wittiest lines in the language. But now the only recording of the speech of Oscar Wilde has been exposed as a fake. Experts have discovered that the crackling tones of the man reading the last three stanzas of The Ballad of Reading Gaol did not belong to the writer. Allegedly made in 1900, the recording - part of the British Library's sound archive - was found last week to have been created in the sixties."
• Wilde's sex life exposed in explicit court files by Vanessa Thorpe and Simon de Burton in The Observer, 6th. May, 2001, page 12. "Explicit documents prepared for the Oscar Wilde libel case have come to light, offering a revealing new glimpse of the double life led by the celebrated Irish writer. The shocking witness statements, previously unseen, were drawn up by employees at Day Russell of the Strand, solicitors for the defence in Wilde's disastrous 1895 legal action against the Marquis of Queensberry. Most of the papers were filed away and never used in court." "The 52 pages of statements from 32 witnesses have never been published and are hand-written on heavy sheets of paper. They were picked up in a junk shop for a pittance during the Fifties by a private collector whose widow is now selling them at Christie's on 6 June. The historic bundle, wrapped in pink string, is expected to fetch 12,000."
• Wilde dossier spells out his lurid affairs by Paul McCann in The Times, 7th. May, 2001, page 7.

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