🌻 The Leading Online Digest of Oscar Wilde Studies
After traveling across the vast expanses of the American south for more than a month, lecturing in 18 cities, Wilde returned to New York for some rest and relaxation with friends at the exclusive Summer resorts of the north-east.
Continue reading “Mountain Lion”
In verifying Oscar Wilde’s 1882 lecture tour of North America, it was prudent to begin with the four published itineraries1. Unfortunately, none of those chronologies agreed with any other, and all were incomplete and occasionally incorrect—so it was necessary to make numerous additions and corrections to dates, locations and lecture titles.
Apart from verification, there is the more pleasing opportunity to discover previously unrecorded lectures: one such is an appearance made by Wilde at Narragansett Pier.
Where is Narragansett Pier?—you might ask.
Continue reading “Narragansett Pier”
—A Summer Adventure—
I suppose not many people in America have given a talk about Oscar Wilde in a place where Oscar Wilde also gave a talk.
It is a feat more easily achieved in the UK and Ireland where old theaters survive. But in America, most of the opera houses and music halls where Wilde lectured have been lost, many destroyed by fire, long ago.
So the possibility of emulating Oscar’s speaking engagements seemed elusive. Until, that is, I reached Newport, Rhode Island, while documenting Wilde’s lecture tour. It was then I realized that not only was such a repeat performance possible, it could be done in a place that was eminently worth visiting.
Continue reading “Celebrating Wilde, and Howe”
In a recent post I noted how Oscar Wilde and Sarah Bernhardt had posed in precisely the same place against the same background when having their photographs taken by Napoleon Sarony.
Wilde and Bernhardt was a curiosity; but now Lillie Langtry makes it a mystery.
Continue reading “Back To The Wall”
Today is the birthday of a famous Irishman and, lest I insult your knowledge, I should quickly add that I do not refer to the young chap above—Wildeans need no reminding that Oscar celebrates his birthday today, October 16th.
Consider instead a curiosity about this date in Irish lore.
Continue reading “The 16th Green”
You could be forgiven for thinking that a blog about Oscar Wilde might not be the most objective forum for reviewing a film about Oscar Wilde—perhaps being too close to its subject to see it as one would ordinarily.
However, the opposite turns out to be true about The Happy Prince (2018) because it is not an ordinary film; and it warrants a specialist view being itself the work of an Oscar Wilde specialist.
Rupert Everett has played Wilde’s fictional characters both on stage and in film; he has already appeared as Oscar Wilde himself in David Hare’s The Judas Kiss on both sides of the Atlantic; and, after spending an age poring over Wilde’s works in homage to his patron saint, Everett has spent the last ten years of his life taking on a tide of personal and industry challenges in order to craft this film.
It is an effort that lays bare a more compelling reason why the film should not be regarded as just another movie. And it is a reason Everett shares with the artist Basil Hallward (in Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray) who accepted that his portrait of Dorian was not just another painting. He confessed: “I have put too much of myself into it.”
Wilde explained this characteristically philosophical view of art when he said:
“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
So it is with Everett, whose devotion during a decade of writing, directing, and now acting in a lifetime passion, might also be regarded as his art. Certainly, The Happy Prince is a highly personalized vision: a dark introspection with the protagonist in almost every scene.
So the inference is that we should not approach the film routinely from the outside in, but rather the other way around. Taken on those terms, there is much to admire, not only for the specialist but for the generalist viewer.
Let us look at it, as Everett did, through that lens.
Continue reading “The Happy Prince—(2018)”
It was time for the press screening of The Happy Prince, Rupert Everett’s new bio-pic of Oscar Wilde’s post-prison depression, to be shown at the headquarters of Sony Pictures in New York ahead of its general release in the U.S. later in the month.
I decided to prepare in a manner becoming the movie.
Continue reading “The Green Hour”
Oscar Wilde was 27 years of age when left England for America on board the S.S. Arizona. By the time he reached New York eight days later he was 26—this being the age he insisted upon in press interviews.1
A simple mistake for anyone to make who was awful at arithmetic or a victim to vanity; but it takes a declared genius to incorporate the error years later into his works, as we shall see.
Continue reading “Twenty-seven”
Here are Oscar and Bosie in May 1893 posing at the studio of the photographer Gillman & Co. of Oxford, whose establishment was at 107 St Aldate’s Street. That location today is a Ladbrokes Off Track Betting Shop.
This well known picture is seemingly unposed: the two are both smoking and seemingly distant—perhaps between arguments.
But upon inspection you’ll see that, in keeping with their lives, all was not as it seems.
Continue reading “Your Slim Gilt Sole”
It has long been assumed that all of the 1882 photographs of Oscar Wilde by Napoleon Sarony were taken during the same visit to his studio. Indeed, in all of Wilde studies there does not appear to be any record of an assertion to the contrary.
However, there is a convincing case to be made that the LAST FOUR photographs were taken at a later date.