Tag: lecture tour

Announcement · Article

Lecture Tour 1882

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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.

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Article

Sew to Speak

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Blue Valley Blade, (Seward, Nebraska), August 23, 1882, 4
SEWING MACHINES IMPROVE SPEAKING

During Oscar Wilde’s 1882 tour of North America, his name was used arbitrarily to sell any number of products—there are several such advertisements on this page.

Above is another example from the Davis Sewing Machine Company asserting that Oscar’s perceived lack of ability as a “talkist” was the result of his not having purchased one of their sewing machines. It’s true that commentators noted Oscar’s untutored monotone delivery, but it’s not clear how owning a Davis sewing machine would have developed his diction—with or without basting.

Needless to say, there is no record in Oscar’s tour expenses of a sewing machine.

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Announcement

Film—Wilde in New York

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A New Video Documentary by Erik Ryding

From Quill Classics comes a new full length video documentary written and directed by Erik Ryding: Wilde in New York.

Although Oscar Wilde is mostly associated with London at his zenith as a playwright, New York City also deserves a special place in his history. It was in New York, in fact, that his first two plays—Vera and The Duchess of Padua—had their world-premiere performances. During his yearlong tour of the United States in 1882, when he was a little-known poet associated with the comic character Bunthorne in Gilbert and Sullivan’s opera Patience, he sojourned in New York several times, establishing important social and artistic connections. Prompting newspaper stories wherever he went, he returned to Europe a genuine celebrity.

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Article

Bridgeton, NJ

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ANOTHER DISCOVERED LECTURE

In verifying Oscar Wilde’s tour of America, one occasionally comes across previously unrecorded lectures, such as the ones at the seaside resort of Narragansett Pier, RI, a second talk given by Wilde in Saratoga Springs, and another he gave for the YMCA in Yorkville, New York City.1

This last lecture in New York redefined what biographers thought had been Wilde’s final lecture in North America at St. John, in New Brunswick, Canada.

Now another lecture has emerged which also post-dates Wilde final Canada visit.

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Article

Narragansett Pier

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—A Newly Discovered Lecture—

In verifying Oscar Wilde’s 1882 lecture tour of North America, it was prudent to begin with the four published itineraries1. Unfortunately, none of those chronologies agreed with any other, and all were incomplete and occasionally incorrect—so it was necessary to make numerous additions and corrections to dates, locations and lecture titles.

Apart from verification, there is the more pleasing opportunity to discover previously unrecorded lectures: one such is an appearance made by Wilde at Narragansett Pier.

Where is Narragansett Pier?—you might ask.

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Article

The State of the Sunflowers

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Oscar Wilde’s Reception in Kansas and the Sunflower Soirée.

I recently gave a talk on the subject of Oscar Wilde and his relationship with sunflowers to the good people of the Maryland Agriculture Resource Council at their Sunflower Soirée, a yearly festival devoted to the Helianthus annuus. Literally, an annual event.

Between you and me, it was a wonderful occasion; but as there was a gloomy weather forecast I choose to take poetic license and focus on the portent to a poignant moment.

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Article

The New Jersey Turnpike

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a runaway American dream

When one thinks about New Jersey today—and as I live there one is forced to occasionally—it becomes quickly apparent that it clings to its endearment as the “Garden” State rather than necessarily exemplifying it. Industrial towns abound, especially in the heartland, and one such place is Freehold, the birthplace of Bruce Springsteen, and where Oscar Wilde once lectured.

I set off on the trail of the Oscar of my American dreams.

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Article

I Can Wait

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Lotos Club New York.jpg
Oscar Wilde’s After-Dinner Rebuke to his Press Critics

Rewritten in 2019 for the Oscar Wilde Society newsletter. oscarwildesociety.co.uk/membership/

It is pleasing to see that recent Wilde studies continue to highlight the emergent nature of Oscar’s American experience, during which time he nurtured the art of public speaking, conducted his first press interviews, staged his first play, had his iconic photographs taken, and stockpiled—to use an American word—material for his future epigrams and works.

But there is a crucial American beginning for Oscar that has been under-appreciated: I refer to his first brush with literary society. It occurred during an event at 149 Fifth Avenue in New York City, the then home of an organisation of journalists known as the Lotos Club.

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Article

Lincoln’s Adult Novelty Store

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lincoln-ass
a historical detective story

The first task when examining Wilde’s tour of America is to establish the location for his lectures.

In this case, it is the lecture which took place on April 24, 1882 in the city ofLincoln, the state capital of Nebraska.

The few contemporary newspaper reports that exist of Wilde’s lecture in Lincoln name ‘City Hall’ as the venue, although one report cites the (lower case) ‘opera house’. Neither of these is entirely wrong, but neither alone allows us to be definitively correct.

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