Editorial Journal of John Cooper on Oscar Wilde
Previously published as The 16th Green
on Oscar’s birthday in 2016 and 2018.
October 16 is a noted birthday in Ireland.
I do not refer solely the young man above—followers of this blog should need no reminding that Oscar Wilde was born on this day,
But consider also a curiosity about this date in Irish lore.
Continue reading “Same Day Delivery”
In its second year, Oscariana celebrates the birth of one of Ireland’s greatest sons. Join the good folks at Wilde’s childhood home and other locations in Dublin for a fabulous festival taking place from October 16-20, 2024.
Continue reading “Oscariana in Dublin II”
Focused though I am on Oscar Wilde In America, I like to keep an eye on the bigger picture.
However, I know that to see the brushstrokes up close it is sometimes necessary to depart from topical and geographical constraints and visit the works themselves.
So last weekend I attended the Oscar Wilde Festival in Galway, Ireland, where I discovered part of the Wilde canvas rendered in two books with contrasting techniques.
Continue reading “Useful Editions”
As San Francisco was the only city in America where Wilde lectured four times, he needed an additional lecture to add to the three he was already giving, which were: The English Renaissance, its evolutionary successor The Decorative Arts, and his usual alternative The House Beautiful.
[See Lecture Titles for the development of Wilde’s lecture topics].
Wilde chose as his subject Irish Poets and Poetry of the Nineteenth Century (referred to in some texts as The Irish Poets of ’48), an idea he had hinted at on St.Patrick’s Day in St.Paul, where he made a rare expression of Irish nationalist sentiment.
On that earlier occasion in St. Paul Wilde was called upon to give only an impromptu speech, and he talked in general terms about Irish achievement and how the English occupation had arrested, but not dimmed, the development of Irish art.
Now in San Francisco he created a full lecture1, in which he focused on an aspect of the arts closer to his knowledge and his mother’s heart: nineteenth century Irish poetry.
Continue reading “Oscar Wilde on Irish Poets”