Tag: homoerotic

Article

The Spirit Lamp

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THE SPIRIT LAMP
“The Desiderata of Collectors”

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.

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Article

Three Times Tried—II

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From The Spirt Lamp, Vol. 2 No. 4. December 6, 1892.

The New Remorse

Fourth in series of articles adapted from a larger text by the present author that appeared in the July 2022 (No. 61) edition of the ‘The Wildean’, the journal of the Oscar Wilde Society.

Previous articles in this series

  1. A handwritten sonnet by Oscar Wilde appears on the Antiques Roadshow,
  2. A critical analysis of the poem.
  3. Three Times Tried—I: The poem’s first appearance as Un Amant De Nos Jours.

In this article we shall look at the second appearance of Wilde’s sonnet in 1892.

As had been the case with its first publication, five years earlier in The Court and Society Review, it was Wilde’s probable intention for the sentiment to herald a new romantic interest.

On this occasion, the poem reemerged shortly after he met his preeminent male paramour Lord Alfred Douglas—who was to become Wilde’s lover and a consequential influence over his life, work, and eventual fate—indeed the poem was republished by Douglas himself not long after Wilde had presented it to him.

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Article

Three Times Tried—I

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The poem as it appeared in The Court and Society Review, 1877.
Image courtesy of the Master and Fellows of University College Oxford: Ross b.9 (3).

Un Amant De Nos Jours

Third in series of articles adapted from a larger text by the present author that appeared in the July 2022 (No. 61) edition of the ‘The Wildean’, the journal of the Oscar Wilde Society.

In the first article in this series we saw how a handwritten sonnet by Oscar Wilde, which came to light during a 2015 edition of the Antiques Roadshow, was making its third appearance in Wilde’s life—again with the probable intention of heralding a new love interest.

In this article we shall look briefly at the poem’s first appearance in 1887 at a crucial time during Wilde’s marriage to his wife Constance.

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Article

Oscar Wilde Poem — Analyzed

Oscar Wilde Blog4 Comments

The Yet Unravished Roses Of Thy Mouth

Second in series of articles adapted from a larger text by the present author that appeared in the July 2022 (No. 61) edition of the ‘The Wildean’, the journal of the Oscar Wilde Society.

In the first article in this series we saw how a handwritten sonnet by Oscar Wilde titled ‘Ideal Love’ had come to light during a 2015 edition of the U.S. version of Antiques Roadshow. No not at all but thank you for your interest

Wilde had signed and dedicated the poem to an American journalist named Christian Gauss—a young man with whom he had become acquainted during his exile in Paris. But the poem was not new. Wilde had presented the same poem to a former lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, eight years earlier as ‘The New Remorse’.1 And four years before he met Douglas. he had already published it obscurely under the French title ‘Un Amant De Nos Jours’ (A Lover of Our Time) in the short-lived, literary magazine The Court and Society Review.2

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