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NEW PUBLICATION: Oscar Wilde: The Women of Homer.
The first edition of a hitherto unpublished work by Oscar Wilde:
"This book is a wonderful contribution both to Homeric and to Wildean studies".
Peter Ackroyd
"The editors' skilful and sensitive rearrangement of the order of the raw manuscript into five sections has resulted in a remarkably coherent and readable essay. This is a beautifully produced edition of Wilde's earliest surviving prose work, one that is likely to satisfy the editors' hope that 'The Women of Homer' will take its place in Wilde's oeuvre."
From the review in The Wildean No. 34 by John Sloan.
Oscar Wilde: The Women of Homer, edited by Thomas Wright and Donald Mead, was published by the Oscar Wilde Society on 1st November 2008 in a cloth bound hardback illustrated edition limited to 130 numbered copies .
In 1876 Oscar Wilde, then an undergraduate at Magdalen College, Oxford, wrote an article surveying the chapter 'The Women of Homer' from John Addington Symonds's newly published Studies of the Greek Poets (Second Series). The article was both a review of Symonds’s book and a general introduction to the heroines of Homer's epics. Wilde failed to complete the piece, abandoning it after penning 8,500 words.
Wilde's manuscript has survived. Robert Ross seems to have contemplated including it in his Collected Edition of Wilde's works but he never finished the work of editing it.
Wilde's article, 'The Women of Homer', is published here for the very first time. It is his earliest surviving prose work, and probably his first attempt at reviewing. It has been read by only a handful of scholars and Wildeans.
In this book, the typescript of the article which Robert Ross prepared is collated with Wilde's manuscript, and reproduced as a scholarly reference text illustrated by facsimiles of pages of the typescript and manuscript, and photographs. It is accompanied by a reading text, aimed at the general reader, in which Wilde's fragmentary article is re-ordered and fully annotated, and illustrated with designs by John Flaxman .
This charming edition of The Women of Homer is an elegant and intriguing addition to Wilde's oeuvre.
It is available direct from the Society at £30.00 inclusive of post and packing within the UK. Please click here to download a purchase form.
Thomas Wright's Table Talk Oscar Wilde, the first English language collection of Wilde's spoken stories, was published in 2000 by Cassell & Co. Oscar's Books, his biography of Wilde the reader, was published by Chatto & Windus in September 2008.
Donald Mead, the Chairman of the Oscar Wilde Society, is the Editor of
The Wildean, A Journal of Oscar Wilde Studies.
REGULAR PUBLICATIONS
The Oscar Wilde Society issues two regular print journals – The Wildean and Intentions - to all its members both in UK and, by airmail, to those overseas.
The Wildean
To quote Jonathan Fryer in his biography Wilde (Haus Publishing, 2005):
'The Wildean provides both stimulation to Wilde scholars and enlightenment to Oscar enthusiasts.'
The Wildean is our Journal of Oscar Wilde Studies. It is published twice a year and contains illustrated articles and correspondence on a wide range of topics relating to Oscar Wilde and his circle. Contributors include many distinguished writers on Wilde. In addition to articles about Wilde’s life and writings, often incorporating the results of new research, important books about Wilde are reviewed as soon as possible after publication.
To quote Professor Pascal Aquien in the notes to his bilingual edition of Un Mari Idéal (GF Flammarion, 2004):
‘The Wildean regularly brings up to date the bibliography of Oscar Wilde.’
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A combined Table of Contents for all the issues of The Wildean may be seen by clicking here.
Here is an outline of the contents of the two most recent issues:
The Wildean No. 35 Issued in July 2009
THOMAS WRIGHT’s biography of Wilde the reader, Oscar’s Books, now published in the USA as Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde, has been a considerable critical and popular success. That book concludes with Wright’s account of how he bought Wilde’s copy of Swinburne’s Essays and Studies at auction, and how he regarded it as a sort of imprimatur for Oscar’s Books and as a talisman that would help him complete his work. In his article about the Swinburne volume he describes how Wilde marked passages in virtually all the essays, transcribed notes into his commonplace book, borrowed critical ideas and drew stylistic inspiration from it. ‘It offers us a portal into Wilde’s reader’s mind and into his writer’s workshop’.
GARY SCHARNHORST in ‘Oscar Wilde and Julian Hawthorne’ considers the relationship between the two men who sometimes crossed paths in London during the late 1870s. Hawthorne was impressed by the brilliance of his mental quality, and found his talk extraordinary, but ‘something in him repelled and something attracted me to him’. The article examines contradictions in Hawthorne’s recollections and the way in which his respect for Wilde declined after his trials.
HORST SCHROEDER continues the detailed consideration of Volume IV of the Oxford English Texts of the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde which he began in The Wildean 34. He scrutinises Josephine Guy’s edition of The Truth of Masks, and provides many illuminating additions, corrections and annotations. He regrets that she has not made more extensive use of recently published material to bring her research up to date. In particular he points out that many of Wilde’s references in The Truth of Masks become intelligible only when seen against the background of a book which Wilde owned - J.R. Planché’s Cyclopedia of Costume (1876-79).
MARGARET WHITE in ‘Wilde’s ‘Puritanism’: Hester Worsley and the American Dream’ examines the American character, Hester Worsley, in Wilde’s most serious play, A Woman of No Importance. In it, Wilde reveals his disappointment in English culture and his dream that something better can be built in the new Eden, America.
SANDRA MAYER’s article ‘When Critics Disagree: Sensationalism and Myth-Making in the Reception of Oscar Wilde in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna’ discusses Wilde’s reputation in Vienna where interest in his writings was fuelled by his notoriety but assessment of them encumbered by the ideological implications of his extraordinary career.
NARAIN PRASAD SHUKLA in ‘Stylistic Devices in Oscar Wilde’s Prose’ studies the decorative style and descriptive richness of A House of Pomegranates and The Happy Prince and Other Tales.
S.I. SALAMENSKI in ‘Sexing Speech: Wilde Talk in Julia Constance Fletcher’s Mirage and Rhoda Broughton’s Second Thoughts considers the talk of Davenant and Chaloner, the flamboyant, charismatic and garrulous but emasculate Wilde-like aesthetes in these two novels by his contemporaries.
MICHAEL SEENEY reviews Nicholas Frankel’s book Masking the Text: Essays on Literature and Mediation in the 1890s commending it as a guide to the experimental book making of the period where visionary publishers and extraordinary illustrators and designers produced some of the most exquisite books the literary world has seen.
The Wildean No. 34 Issued in January 2009
ALAN BLACK in 'Oscar Wilde at the Hotel Sandwich' investigates the hotel at which Wilde stayed on his arrival in Dieppe and from which he wrote to Ada Leverson 'I am staying here as Sebastian Melmoth – not Esquire but Monsieur Sebastian Melmoth.' There have been confusions about the location of the Hotel and indeed whether it was a hotel at all. All is disentangled in this well-researched article.
DAVID HALDANE LAWRENCE, in 'Charles Brookfield: A Paradoxical Life', tells the story of a complex man and sorts through the truths and half-truths, conflicting evidence and differences of opinion surrounding him. He was a contradictory character: witty, conservative, vindictive, destructive and obsessive, and has been vilified for his role in Oscar Wilde's downfall.
BERNADETTE McCARTHY in 'Wilde and Yeats in The Gaiety Theatre, Dublin 1883' examines the reception, visual impact, and peculiarly Irish dimension of Wilde's lectures at the Gaiety Theatre and their influence on an eighteen-year-old poet who was in the audience – W.B. Yeats – who, having heard Wilde, followed a course through design into the visual arts and then into literature.
KAREN SASHA TIPPER's account of 'Lotten Von Kraemer's Visit to the Wildes' Dublin Home in 1857 gives an intimate picture of Oscar's parents at home, quoting from Lotten von Kraemer's memoir, and Speranza's letters to her.
PETER CHADWICK's wide-ranging study, 'Decadence as Growth: Oscar Wilde and the Renewal of Romanticism', explores decadent romanticism, the meaning of growth and the creativity of error. Wilde saw decadence as an avenue not to decay and degeneration but to growth.
HORST SCHROEDER begins a detailed consideration of Volume IV of the Oxford English Texts of the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. He considers Josephine Guy’s edition of Historical Criticism and The Soul of Man, finding it an important work but one with a number of deficiencies which he examines point by point.
ANGELA KINGSTON in 'Octave's Oscar: Wilde in the Fiction of Octave Mirbeau' analyses the way in which Mirbeau satirises both Wilde and his work in The Diary of a Chambermaid which features a brief but revealing portrait of Wilde in the person of Sir Harry Kimberley.
ARNOLD T. SCHWAB investigates the meeting, described by Sacheverell Sitwell between Bosie Douglas and Alfred Taylor in Chicago: 'Patrician Meets Pimp?'
JOHN SLOAN praises Thomas Wright and Donald Mead’s scholarly edition of 'Oscar Wilde – The Women of Homer' as a beautifully produced edition of a remarkably coherent and readable essay – the first edition of Wilde's earliest surviving prose work.
NEIL McKENNA in 'Literary Gluttony: Thomas Wright's Oscar's Books' describes it as having the increasingly rare qualities of being an engaging, beautifully written and beautifully edited book.
DONALD MEAD finds Angela Kingston's book 'Oscar Wilde as a Character in Victorian Fiction' a valuable aid to the understanding of Wilde and his world, socially, politically, culturally and ideologically.
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The Wildean is a publication of permanent interest and back copies of previous issues are available.
To quote Professor Joseph Bristow,
'The Wildean is brimful of good things'.
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Intentions
The programme of forthcoming events, with booking forms, is published in Intentions, the Society’s Journal/Newsletter which is issued to all members about six times a year.
Intentions, edited by Michael Seeney, is fully illustrated in colour and gives information about public performances of Wilde plays, other theatrical occasions and films. In each issue there is a detailed survey of newly published books of Wildean interest, with publishing details, synopses and comment.
Intentions is also a journal of record for Society events. To take just a few examples:
The Birthday Dinner in 2008 at which Oliver Parker gave a rare and generous insight into the film-making process including the problems of bringing Dorian Gray to the screen (the film opened in cinemas in September 2009). Neil McKenna (author of The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde) gave a talk on Edward Shelley: A Boy of Some Importance; and Rick Gekoski gave an authoritative and very entertaining lesson in how to form a book collection, including the formation and disposal of the John Simpson Collection.
Recent Society lunches at which Neil McKenna talked about 'Fanny and Stella' (Boulton and Park); Thomas Wright and Simon Scardifield presented 'Oscar's Books' ; Don Mead and Thomas Wright presented 'Oscar Wilde: The Women of Homer'; Gyles Brandreth gave some background to his series of detective stories featuring Wilde; and Joy Melville spoke on Ellen Terry.
The Society has made visits to Reading Gaol and the accounts of these are copiously illustrated with contemporary and archive photographs and drawings.
Intentions also publishes interesting and unusual items culled from sometimes obscure sources. Recent issues contain an article by Constance Wilde in The Young Woman on 'How to Decorate a House'; a review by Willie Wilde of a performance of 'Helena in Troas'; and an article in Harper's Weekly in January 1882 about Wilde 'Our Aesthetic Visitor'.
Intentions regularly reproduces advertisements, rare trade cards and other commercially produced items connected with Oscar Wilde and his works.
Occasional publications
Special publications for members include Don Mead's guides prepared for the Society visits to places associated with Wilde. Oscar Wilde in Paris was recently reissued on the occasion of the Society’s participation in the commemoration of the re-interment of Wilde’s remains at Père Lachaise organised by Société Oscar Wilde en France. Oscar Wilde in Dublin, and Oscar Wilde in Dieppe and Berneval were also updated for successive visits. The various sites are identified in the notes, so that the booklets may also be of use to the unaccompanied visitor.
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