The Spirit Lamp

The Spirit Lamp was an Oxford University magazine of the 1890s described by the Pall Mall Gazette at the time as “free from the narrowness and banality which mark the greater part of English university literature and has a pleasing air of cultured bohemianism.”¹

The magazine ran to 15 issues in total and became associated with Oscar Wilde—particularly the last six which were edited by Alfred Douglas during whose tenure the “cultured bohemianism” evolved into decadent homoeroticism.

Praise for the magazine continued into the new century. In 1912 The Morning Post described it as “the best of Oxford’s many momentary periodicals”,² and twenty years later the literary world was still impressed:

“Among college lucubrations, which are proverbially ephemeral, there are some which, from the subsequent fame of their contributors and sometimes for bibliographical reasons, become the desiderata of collectors. The Spirit Lamp is notable in both these respects.”³

E. Beresford Chancellor
The London Mercury, Vol. XXV No. 148 (February, 1932).

This “subsequent fame of their contributors” was another way of saying “subsequent infamy of Oscar Wilde”—thus alluding to his literary satellites including Robert Ross, Pierre Louÿs, Lionel Johnson, John Addington Symonds, Max Beerbohm, and even the Marquis of Queensberry. Wilde himself provided three pieces for the magazine (two prose poems and the “Three Times Tried” love sonnet now titled ‘The New Remorse’). But the leading contributor during Alfred Douglas’s tenure was, of course, Alfred Douglas.

Desiderata

If The Spirit Lamp was desired by collectors in 1932, it is all the more collectible today: issues are scarce. For that reason I have catalogued and uploaded all 15 magazines on my web site here.

The issues were published in four Volumes with the color of the cover maturing first from orange to white, and then to two indispensable final issues in a somber blue, now with a subtitle: ‘An Aesthetic, Literary and Critical Magazine’.

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TWO NUMBERS WORTHY OF NOTE

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Volume III. No. II — (cover white)

Volume III. No. II contains the first appearance in print of ‘The House of Judgment‘—Wilde’s prose poem of divine intractability. The gist of the story is that an inveterate sinner cannot be sent to Hell because he has always lived there; nor can he be sent to Heaven because he is not able to imagine it. Inertia sets in and silence reigns in the House of Judgment.

Also with the afterlife in mind, this important issue features what is very likely the last poem that John Addington Symonds provided for publication before he died.

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Volume IV. No. I — (cover blue)

Volume IV. No. I is an exceptional issue for several reasons.

—Firstly, apart from Douglas’s memorial to Symonds, this issue contains a new piece by Symonds that Douglas had recently solicited from him. It is an extremely sensory sketch of Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5⁴ rewritten by Symonds from a letter to his friend, biographer, and literary executor, Horatio Brown. Symonds had first been moved by a concert experience of the Emperor Concerto (as it is also known) back in 1864⁵, but this “work of decadent excess”⁶ in The Spirit Lamp is his most evocative response to it. It represents one of Symonds’s first posthumous publications, and is rare because (apart from the similar letter upon which it is based⁷) it does not appear to have been published elsewhere.⁸

—This number of The Spirit Lamp is also unique in being only one with a contribution by Wilde’s former lover, Robert Ross.⁹

—And it is memorable too because it contains Alfred Douglas’s spirited defense of Wilde’s French play under the heading ‘Salomé—A Critical Review.‘ In it Douglas, in his characteristically inflated and fractious way, rebuked critics and “anonymous scribblers” for their “pompous absurdities” about the play, while simultaneously praising the daring and musicality of Wilde’s “perfect work of art.”

But perhaps what sets this issue apart most permanently in the Wilde story is the “Sonnet” on page 1 by Pierre Louÿs.

One man sensed the convergence of history provided by this issue. In 1911 Thomas B. Mosher published his edition of Wilde’s play Salomé-A Tragedy in One Act. Recognizing that Wilde had dedicated Salomé to Pierre Louÿs (who had assisted with the French grammar) Mosher decided to accompany the text in his edition not only with Louÿs’s ‘Sonnet’, but also alongside Douglas’s ‘Critical Review’—in order to convey a unity of purpose in rehabilitating Wilde’s play and reestablishing its Symbolist roots.¹¹

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Spirit Lamps in Tite Street

In a Wildean afterword it is worth noting three entries in the Tite Street sale catalogue (of Oscar Wilde’s possessions) that was issued at the time of the bankruptcy sale of his household effects.

The catalogue includes the following three numbered Lots:

Lot 112: 3 Nos. The Spirit Lamp [the magazine]

Lot 124: A crayon drawing The Editor of the Spirit Lamp at work by W. H. Rothingham (sic) [Rothenstein]

As Rob Marland informs us:

“William Rothenstein drew a pastel of Lord Alfred Douglas for Wilde, who wrote to the artist that he would like the portrait to have ‘a black and white frame with no margin or mounting. The lovely drawing is complete in itself.’ It showed Douglas in profile, wearing flannels and lying back in an armchair, and was entitled ‘The Editor of the Spirit Lamp at work’.

The title must have been written on the portrait, as it was given in the 1895 catalogue (Lot 124). The picture was bought by the Leversons and passed to Wilde’s friend More Adey, but its present location is unknown.”

And finally, to complete the story and found amongst Oscar’s blue and white china:

Lot 138: A spirit lamp in tin box.

© John Cooper, 2025.

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Related:

The Spirit Lamp—A Catalogue Of All 15 Issues (Downloadable)

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Footnotes:

1. The Pall Mall Gazette, Feb 28, 1893, 2 ↩︎
2. The Morning Post, March 7, 1912. ↩︎
3. The London Mercury, Vol XXV, No 148, February, 1932. ↩︎
4. Hyde, H.Montgomery, Lord Alfred Douglas: A biography, New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, (1985) 37. ↩︎
5. Riddell, Fraser, Music and the Queer Body in English Literature at the Fin de Siècle. Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture. Cambridge University Press; (2022) 1. ↩︎
6. Ibid. 114. ↩︎
7. From Davos, January 7, 1891.
   Brown Horatio F,, Letters And Papers Of John Addington Symonds, London: John Murray (1923) 241-2. ↩︎
8. Not found nor noted in Bibliography of the Writings of John Addington Symonds, London: John Castle, (1925). ↩︎
9. A long story titled ‘How We Lost The Book of Jasher’. Signed with the pseudonym “R”, ↩︎
10. The Daily Telegraph, April 4, 1895, p. 8
    
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11. For more on this and Mosher see my article co-authored with Philip R. Bishop: ‘A Wilde Ride for Mosher: Thomas Bird Mosher’s Oscar Wilde Publications’, The Wildean No. 66 (January 2025). ↩︎

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