As noted in my recent article Last Rites, Oscar Wilde died in the Hôtel d’Alsace on the Rue des Beaux Arts in Paris, on November 30, 1900. One of the few people present on that occasion was Robert Ross.
Continue reading “Robert Ross”Robert Ross
Category: Article
Dream World
Oscar Wilde : The Artist as Dreamer
—Feasting With The Greeks—
The pathways of the poets are often traversed by dreamers destined to wake up one day to the dangers of the real world.
One such idealist in Victorian London was Oscar Wilde who, in the homophobic 1890s, was often to be found obliviously “feasting with panthers”1 in fashionable restaurants such as Kettner’s.
Continue reading “Dream World”The Friend of Oscar Wilde
A Letter From Lord Alfred Douglas
“It is not in my system to moralize, [or] to abandon a friend.”
Le Havre is a French port city on the English Channel at the estuary of the river Seine in Normandy—which is where one might expect it to be located given that Le Havre means “the harbor”.
What might also be self-evident is that when Alfred Douglas visited this pleasant coastal resort, in August 1895, it was not long before he became combative with the local press.
Continue reading “The Friend of Oscar Wilde”Last Rites
The Conditional Baptism of Oscar Wilde
The day before he died.
Oscar Wilde died at ten minutes to 2 PM on November 30th, 1900. We know this from a detailed letter, citing the precise time of death, written by Robert Ross who was with Wilde when he died.1 But less certain is what happened immediately before and after that moment.
Continue reading “Last Rites”Autumnal
Dowson’s Dreamful Autumn
Summer’s loss seems little…on days like these.
In October 1892, Ernest Dowson wrote to his friend Victor Plarr1 to say:
“My muse awoke from her torpor of many months yesterday, here is her feeble utterance, but she may run to another verse by and by.”
End of the Innocence
Whitehouse vs. The BBC
Perversely Topical
No, not that White House. But still topical because, coincidentally, Merlin Holland’s new book, Oscar Wilde, The Legacy of a Scandal, tells of a spat between another Whitehouse and the BBC—and a group of perverse individuals.
Continue reading “End of the Innocence”Peters Portraits
Various Likenesses of William Theodore Peters
Including a Discovered Sketch
The young and ill-fated American poet William Theodore Peters was integral to the clique of 1890s British decadents. One fact upholding this claim is that even the doyen of the movement, Oscar Wilde, had a portrait of him hanging in his Tite Street drawing room.
But which portrait of Peters was it?
Continue reading “Peters Portraits”Lecture Tour 1882
Oscar Wilde’s Lecture Tour 1882
A New Landing Page
On his lecture tour of North America Oscar Wilde conducted 141 lectures over 11 months of 1882.
Now with a new landing page by digital creator Jon Darby, these lecture tour pages document a detailed, comprehensive, and accurate record of Wilde’s tour.
Each lecture has its own page dedicated to illustrating the lecture with details of the date, location, subject, lecture venue, and Wilde’s lodging, along with related ephemera—the standard being that all information is verified by primary sources.
Continue reading “Lecture Tour 1882”Angus Wilson
Sir Angus Wilson, CBE (1913—1991)
One of England’s first openly gay authors.
My recent article The ‘Jeweled Style’ focused on the literary device of that name “in which authors created jewel-like effects by the ordering and juxtaposition of individual elements”.1 And I noted how Lord Alfred Douglas and the poet Charles Kains Jackson had found the stylistic practice present in Oscar Wilde’s writing.
To those two observers I can now add the novelist and short story writer Angus Wilson: a kindred soul who used the same expression about Wilde’s prose over 60 years later, when he wrote:
“It is in his jewelled phrases, his poetic prose that Wilde leaves logic and abstraction behind…”
Angus Wilson was an interesting character and not a little ornate himself.
Continue reading “Angus Wilson”Oscariana In Dublin III
Oscariana in Dublin 2025
https://oscariana.ie
In its third year, Oscariana celebrates the birth of Oscar Wilde at his childhood home and other locations in Dublin.
The fabulous festival of Cinema, Shows, Tours, and Exhibitions takes place from October 16-20, 2025.
Continue reading “Oscariana In Dublin III”