LESSER KNOWN IMAGES RELATED TO OSCAR WILDE
© John Cooper, 2022.
The Rarer Oscar
Tag: ephemera
Rediscovered II
You may recall the rediscovered photograph of Oscar Wilde (similar to the one above) that I featured in this post — where it was effectively published for the first time in almost 130 years.
The photograph had originally appeared in the March 10, 1893 issue of the Westminster Budget, in an article titled “Mr. Wilde’s Forbidden Play” about Oscar’s French work Salomé.
At the time of that earlier post I expressed the hope is that an original print might come to light, and one has not done so yet. However, what has emerged is another copy of the newspaper, this time with a better quality image—now shown above.
So who do we have thank for this improved print?
Continue reading “Rediscovered II”Début du siècle
Memorabilia of Oscar Wilde’s Friends From World War I
Oscar Wilde, essential figure of the fin de siècle (end of the century) though he was, joked with Robert Ross that he would not outlive it. Oscar, who was usually right about everything, died in November 1900.
He left behind friends who were to belong to a new movement—an artistic circle that I might call the début du siècle, who inherited a world of change that was soon to become a world at war.
Continue reading “Début du siècle”Conspicuous (Even By His Absence)
Oscar Wilde could be found everywhere in 1882
The phenomenon of Wilde’s US ubiquitous prresence has been well-documented, most recently in David Friedman’s Wilde in America (2014) which portrays Wilde as being so intent upon fame that he had a strategy for achieving it—a view with much validity.
Whatever Wilde’s personal strategy was, however, his effort was compounded by other factors: his own tour publicity, the popularity of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience and its burlesques, and a general curiosity of the people to see him. As a result, one might wonder whether it is possible to be too well known.
Take the world of advertising.
Continue reading “Conspicuous (Even By His Absence)”