Oscar Wilde on Machines
The irresistible force of the industrial revolution meets the
immovable objection of the aesthetic movement.
The reasons for Oscar Wilde’s much-heralded lecture tour of America seemed clear enough: to promote Gilbert & Sullivan’s latest operetta, Patience, while conducting a series of lectures on subjects of his own choosing.
At least that was the undertaking devised by the theatrical impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte.
Any suggestion that Oscar might, meanwhile, attempt to inculcate the American masses with what he perceived as much-needed ideas about art and aesthetics, would be entirely ulterior.
But Oscar made it his self-imposed mission to do just that.
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