A Preface to Oscar Wilde

Anne Varty

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780367237417
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317892304
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

A Preface to Oscar Wilde provides a detailed study of the cultural, personal and political influences that shaped Wilde's writing. The study concentrates primarily on his fiction, critical dialogues and plays that were published between 1890 and 1895, and detailed accounts of Wilde's lesser known works such as his poetry, journalism and letters are also presented. The first section places his work in a variety of cultural contexts: Wilde's family life and his Irish inheritance are examined, the impact of his sexuality on his writing and reputation is considered, and a description is provided of how Wilde became a legendary figure in the arts. Major innovations and successes, such as The Picture of Dorian Gray, Salome and The Importance of Being Earnest are related to avant garde movements of their day such as aestheticism, decadence, and symbolism. Reference sections provide supporting material such as a Wilde chronology, a glossary of terms and a bibliography for further study.

Anne Varty sets out in this study to bring to life the work of Wilde, and to make his writing accessible to readers who are unfamiliar with his achievements. In so doing, she confronts the ethical drive of his work, and demonstrates the coherent evolution of his work from the aestheticism of the early poetry, through the sophisticated handling of theatre, to the dark self-scrutiny of autobiography.

The comprehensive and accessible approach makes this a useful reference work to all who are studying Oscar Wilde, both at A Level and undergraduate level. The content will also appeal to the general reader who is seeking to gain a greater understanding and appreciation of Wilde's work.

Part One

The Writer and His Setting

Chronology

	WILDE’S LIFE	OTHER EVENTS
1835		Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin.
1854	Oscar Wilde born in Dublin on 16 October, christened Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde. (Elder brother, William, born 26 September 1852.)
1855	Family move into the exclusive Georgian square, 1 Merrion Square North, Dublin.
1857		First edition of Les Fleurs du Mal by Baudelaire.
1864	Father knighted for services to medicine.	Matthew Arnold (Oxford Professor of Poetry) lectures on ‘The Function of Criticism at the Present Time’.
1864–71	Sent to board at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, north west of Dublin.
1867	Younger sister, Isola, dies, aged eight.	Zola, Thérèse Raquin.
1871–74	Reads Classics at Trinity College, Dublin.
1873		Walter Pater’s first edition of Studies in the History of the Renaissance.
1874	Graduates from Trinity College with a First Class Degree. Awarded Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek. Moves to England in October to matriculate, with a scholarship, at Oxford University.	First Impressionist Exhibition in Paris. Ruskin lectures on Florentine Art in Oxford. He encourages his students, Wilde included, to join him in a road-building project at nearby Ferry Hinksey.
1874–78	Reads ‘Greats’ (Literae Humaniores: Greek and Latin) at Magdalen College; Oxford.
1875	Visits Italy in June with his Dublin professor, J. P. Mahaffy.
1876	Father, Sir William Wilde, dies on 19 April. In July Wilde takes a First Class in Classical Moderations.
1877	Visits Greece with J. P. Mahaffy during March and April, returning to Oxford via Rome. Grosvenor Gallery opens in London: Wilde reviews the first exhibition of new work for the Dublin University Magazine.	Whistler sues Ruskin for the abusive review of his paintings exhibited in the Grosvenor Gallery.
1878	Wins the Newdigate Prize for poetry at Oxford University with his poem Ravenna. In July, finishes his studies with a First Class degree.
1879	Moves to London.	Punch launches its campaign of Wilde caricatures. Sarah Bernhardt and the Comédie Française perform Phèdre in London.
1881	Poems published at own expense in June. On 24 December, embarks for a lecture tour of America and Canada.
1882	Tours America and Canada with a small repertoire of lectures on British aestheticism, sponsored by D’Oyly Carte to publicise Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera Patience. Embarks for England on 27 December.	Married Woman’s Property Act.
1883	Sets out for Paris in late January. Settles there for three months. Returns to London and, after visiting New York in August for the unsuccessful première of his play Vera, begins a lecture tour of Britain. Sells his blank verse tragedy, The Duchess of Padua, to the American actress, Mary Anderson.
1884	Marries Constance Lloyd on 29 May in St James’s Church, Sussex Gardens, London. Honeymoon in Paris and Dieppe. Returning to London, begins a six-year stint as a book reviewer for a variety of British journals.	A Rebours, by J.-K. Huysmans, published in Paris. E. W. Godwin and Lady Archibald Campbell collaborate to form ‘The Pastoral Players’ who produce As You Like It in Coombe Park, Surrey.
1885	Moves with Constance to 16 Tite Street, Chelsea. On 5 June their first son, Cyril, is born.	The German Duke of Saxe Meiningen brings his company to London to perform Julius Caesar. Whistler delivers his Ten O’Clock Lecture’. Pater publishes Marius the Epicurean. The Criminal Law Amendment Act passed: it prohibits ‘gross indecency’ between consenting males and sets out the terms under which Wilde will serve the maximum sentence.
1886	Wilde meets Robert Ross, said to have introduced him to the practice of homosexuality. On 3 November Wilde’s second son, Vyvyan, is born.	Liberal Prime Minister Gladstone’s first Home Rule Bill for Ireland is defeated in the House of Commons.
1887–89	Edits Woman’s World.
1888	The Happy Prince and Other Tales is published in May.
1889	‘The Portrait of Mr W. H.’ is published in Blackwood’s Magazine in July.	Maurice Maeterlinck’s first play, La Princesse Maleine, published in Brussels.
1890	The Picture of Dorian Gray published in the American journal Lippincotfs Monthly Magazine in June.	George Bernard Shaw lectures on ‘The Quintessence of Ibsenism’ at the Fabian Society.
1891	In June, introduced to Lord Alfred Douglas (1870–1945), youngest son of the Marquess of Queensberry. In January, second play, The Duchess of Padua, is produced unsuccessfully in New York as Guido Ferranti. Publications: ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism’, The Fortnightly Review, February; The Picture of Dorian Gray, in London, April; Intentions, May; Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories, July; A House of Pomegranates, November. Wilde spends November and December in Paris, writing Salome.	John Stuart Parnell, Irish political leader and advocate of Home Rule for Ireland, falls from public life through involvement in divorce proceedings. First English production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler with Elizabeth Robins in the title role.
1892	Lord Alfred Douglas and Wilde become lovers. In February, Lady Windermere’s Fan produced in London by George Alexander at the St James’s Theatre. In June, Salome banned by the Lord Chamberlain from a London, production starring Sarah Bernhardt.
1893	The original French text of Salome published in Paris. In April, A Woman of No Importance is produced by Beerbohm Tree at the Haymarket Theatre, London. Lady Windermere’s Fan published in November.	Gladstone’s second Home Rule Bill is defeated by the House of Lords.
1894	Salome, translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas and illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley, published in February. Wilde spends May in Florence with Douglas. Publications: The Sphinx, illustrated by Charles Ricketts, June; ‘Poems in Prose’ (five fables), The Fortnightly Review, July; A Woman of No Importance, October; ‘A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated’, Saturday Review, November; ‘Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young’, The Chameleon, December.	Shaw’s second play, Mrs Warren’s Profession, published.
1895	An Ideal Husband, produced by Lewis Waller, opens in January at the Haymarket Theatre, London. In February, The Importance of Being Earnest opens at the St James’s Theatre, London, produced by George Alexander. After visiting Algiers with Douglas during January and February, accused of sodomy by the Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde charges him with criminal libel. On 3 April, the first of the three trials in which Wilde is involved opens at the Old Bailey. The Marquess of Queensberry is acquitted on 5 April. Wilde immediately arrested for ‘acts of gross indecency with other male persons’. Imprisoned in Holloway 6–26 April, awaiting trial. Found guilty on 25 May. Judge Edward Carson sentences Wilde to imprisonment with two years hard labour. Constance withdraws divorce suit in October, but changes her name to Holland. In November Wilde declared bankrupt.	English translation of Degeneration by Max Nordau.
1896	His mother, Lady Wilde, dies 3 February. Salome produced by Lugné-Poë at the Theatre de l’ uvre, Paris, in February.
1897	From January to March composes a long confessional and philosophical letter to Douglas, later known as ‘De Profundis’. Released 19 May and immediately leaves Britain for the Continent, settling first at Berneval near Dieppe and later reuniting with Douglas in Italy. Adopts the pseudonym ‘Sebastian Melmoth’. Publishes a letter in The Daily Chronicle about cruelty to children in British prisons.
1898	Moves to Paris. The Ballad of Reading Gaol published. A second letter of complaint about British prison conditions published in The Daily Chronicle. Constance dies in April and is buried in Genoa. Refused access to his two sons.
1899	The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband published. Travels in France, Switzerland and Italy.
1900	Visits Rome. Returns to Paris, falls seriously ill in October. In last stages of illness baptised into the Roman Catholic Church. Dies 30 November in the Hotel d’Alsace, Paris. Requiem mass said for him at St Germain-des-Prés. Buried at Bagneux, 3 December.
1905	Robert Ross, literary executor, publishes extracts of 1897 letter to Douglas under the title ‘De Profundis’. Richard Strauss composes the operatic setting for the French text of Salome. Sales of Wilde’s work on the Continent, particularly in German translation, put his estate back into credit.
1908	Collected Edition of Wilde’s work, edited by Ross.
1909	Wilde’s remains are moved from Bagneux to Père Lachaise when the monument by Jacob Epstein is erected to mark the grave.
1962	Publication of The Letters of Oscar Wilde, edited by Rupert Hart-Davis, including the first complete uncensored printing of ‘De Profundis’.
1995	Memorial to Wilde unveiled in Westminster Abbey. A simple plate ‘Oscar Wilde 1854–1900’ placed in the window newly designed by Graham Jones.

1 Biographical and historical context

Family life: Lady Wilde and Mrs Oscar Wilde

In Wilde’s private life no woman was more honoured than his mother, ‘La Madre Devotissima’, and none was more betrayed than his wife, Constance. Oscillating between the poles of filial duty and adulterous neglect, Wilde’s sexuality, from about 1886 (after two years of marriage), made orthodox family life an impossibility. Set, therefore, at a distance from the institution which had nurtured him as a child and which, at least as the publicly married and doting father of two sons, he continued to uphold, Wilde cultivated an intellectual notion of the ideal family. His most radical critique of the family is given in ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism’, while the social comedies suggest that degrees of orthodoxy are appropriate according to the politics (radical or reactionary) of the partners involved. One of his earliest, and most conservative, pictures of the ideal family provides him with a model for the government of the State. Arguing for the involvement of women in politics, in an editorial for the Woman’s World, he suggests:

If something is right in a family, it is difficult to see why it is therefore, without any further reason, wrong in the State. If the participation of women in politics means that as a good family educates all its members so must a good State, what better issue could there be? The family ideal of the State may be difficult of attainment, but as an ideal it is better than the policeman theory. It would mean the moralisation of politics. The cultivation of separate sorts of virtues and separate ideals of duty in men and women has led to the whole social fabric being weaker and un-healthier than it need be.

(Woman’s World, May 1889)

A rejection of the ‘policeman theory’ of the State would turn out to be one of Wilde’s greatest challenges to his contemporaries, but here, in 1889, it stands as a mildly voiced prelude to the creative fertility of the coming six years. His sense that a good family ‘educates all its members’, irrespective of sex, came from personal experience. Both his mother and his wife were educated (though not formally), and were unusually articulate. But it is his mother’s voice which is heard loudest and longest among those of Wilde’s women.

Lady Wilde

Jane Francesca Elgee was born on 27 December 1821 into a family of Conservative Protestants, recently moved from Wexford to Dublin. She was educated at home, and despite the potential political shelter of that environment, she became an ardent Irish Nationalist during the 1840s. Under the pseudonym ‘Speranza’ she began to contribute impassioning verse to the republican journal Nation, signing her first covering letter John Fanshaw Ellis’. She became a cel...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• FM Image
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Dedication
• Part One The Writer and His Setting
• Part Two Aesthetic and Political Philosophy
• Part Three Critical Survey
• Part Four Reference Section
• Gazetteer
• Short glossary of critical terms
• Further reading
• Index