🌻 The Leading Online Digest of Oscar Wilde Studies
Launching Yellow Nineties 2.0: A Symposium & Celebration
Toronto Metropolitan University’s Centre for Digital Humanities
—Virtual Symposium—
Thursday, April 18th from 9:30am – 5:00pm EST
A podcast worth noting for Wildeans is Rosebud—a series of interviews conducted by the estimable Gyles Brandreth. Notable not because Gyles is now a podcaster—surely a part preordained for a journalist, novelist, non-fiction writer, publisher, television presenter, after-dinner speaker, theatre producer, university chancellor, former politician, and perennial novelty knitwear model.
No—it is more pertinently notable because Gyles is also the Honorary President of the Oscar Wilde Society. And it’s more recently notable because on March 21, 2024 his guest on the podcast was Rupert Everett, an actor who also has strong connections to Oscar Wilde.
Continue reading “Rosebud”
Wilde Sunflowers – original painting by Gerard Byrne, Signed.
Oil & acrylic border on canvas. Bespoke tray frame.
—A Chance To Own This Original Painting—
The Oscar Wilde family home, built in 1760 at 1 Merrion Square North, Dublin, has embarked on a much-needed restoration to its annex that houses Sir William’s former consultation room, a gallery, and the balconied first floor orangery.
Here is an opportunity to support the project and in the process win an original artwork by one of Ireland’s leading contemporary artists, and artist-in-residence, Gerard Byrne—the painting was made in the Speranza lounge of the house during the recent Oscariana festival.
Artist Gerard Byrne with Oscar Wilde’s grandson, Merlin Holland,
who visited the house recently and lent his support to the project.
Closing Date is Thursday, 7th December 2023 @ 10pm
© John Cooper, 2023.
Related Links:
Whitman and Wilde Part 2:
Oscar Wilde in New York, 1882
The Gilded Gentleman is a history podcast hosted by Carl Raymond in New York City that launched in 2021–and already it has garnered a million downloads.
In a series of bi-weekly interviews with academics, authors, and experts in their relevant fields, The Gilded Gentleman tells the story of the society, culture, architecture, food, fashion, design, music, and literature of Paris’ Belle Époque and England’s Victorian and Edwardian eras.
I was asked to contribute to a two-part episode contrasting how—thirty years apart—Oscar Wilde’s and Walt Whitman’s arrivals in New York inspired them to move onto greater fame and celebrity.
Click on the link below to listen to the show on the Gilded Gentleman Episodes page of the web site, or it can be found wherever you download your podcasts:
© John Cooper, 2023.
A previously unpublished autograph letter signed (ALS) by Oscar Wilde appeared a little while ago at auction in North Carolina. Aided by the letter’s evident authenticity and the fact that the consignor is a direct family descendant, it sold at auction for $5,500.
The item is a note sent by Wilde to Anne Lynch Botta, the 19th century doyenne of New York literary society, in which he expresses regret at not being able to attend a reception, owing to his impending departure for Canada.
We can use internal evidence from the letter to learn more about Wilde’s itinerary.
Continue reading “An Impromptu Lecture”
In my last article I alluded to how that erstwhile sinner, Oscar Wilde, had achieved the exalted air of sainthood. Unfortunately, for collectors of Wildean memories, with that classification comes the saintly cliché that a good man is hard to find.
And nowhere is that maxim manifested more in Oscar Wilde’s case than in the promised land of lost pictures. On the artifact scale of hardness-to-find, the rarest commodities are gold dust, hen’s teeth, and, hardest of all, previously unseen photographs of Oscar Wilde.
Continue reading “Rediscovered”
A rarely seen image of Oscar Wilde has recently been added to the series of photographs taken by Napoleon Sarony on January 5th, 1882.
Its rarity is evidenced by the fact that it does not appear to have been been published in any publicly available print medium to date, nor anywhere else previously online.
However, a proof print of it has lain dormant in the extensive Wilde holdings of the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin—in the James McNeill Whistler collection to be precise—and their copy might be the only extant print.
Let us see how this photograph re-emerged and how it affects the total count of known Sarony images of Oscar Wilde
Continue reading “Sarony 3A”
Apologies for the hiatus from writing articles for this blog while I took time out to attend to two parallel projects.
First is my historical archive which was in need of an update to latest web standards and to address improvements to usability. Click on this link to Oscar Wilde In America to visit the new site.
Continue reading “Web Site Upgrade”
Readers will recall my visit to the New York Antiquarian Book Fair a couple of years ago where I was offered a very rare Oscar Wilde document.
It was a typescript of the (originally) unpublished portions of Wilde’s passive-aggressive prison masterpiece De Profundis.
It was prepared by Wilde’s literary executor, Robert Ross, for use in the 1913 trial when Lord Alfred Douglas (Oscar’s lover Bosie) sued a young Arthur Ransome for having the temerity to imply that a person he didn’t name just might have had a hand in Wilde’s downfall.
Continue reading “Philadelphia Freedom”
—Watch Sundance Live—
The 2018 Sundance Film Festival gets underway today, January 18th, and making its world premiere is The Happy Prince written and directed by Rupert Everett.
It is the story of the last days of Oscar Wilde—and the ghosts haunting them brought to vivid life. His body ailing, Wilde lives in exile, surviving on the flamboyant irony and brilliant wit that defined him as the transience of lust is laid bare and the true riches of love are revealed. Or so it says here.
Continue reading “The Happy Prince”