🌻 The Leading Online Digest of Oscar Wilde Studies
“The Best Franc’s Worth I Ever Had”.
As noted in my recent article Last Rites, Oscar Wilde died in the Hôtel d’Alsace on the Rue des Beaux Arts in Paris, on November 30, 1900. One of the few people present on that occasion was Robert Ross.
Continue reading “Robert Ross”
Feasting With The Greeks
The pathways of the poets are often traversed by dreamers destined to wake up one day to the dangers of the real world.
One such idealist in Victorian London was Oscar Wilde who, in the homophobic 1890s, was often to be found obliviously “feasting with panthers”1 in fashionable restaurants such as Kettner’s.
Continue reading “Dream World”
“it is not in my system to moralize, [or] to abandon a friend”
Le Havre is a French port city on the English Channel at the estuary of the river Seine in Normandy—which is where one might expect it to be located given that Le Havre means “the harbor”.
What might also be self-evident is that when Alfred Douglas visited this pleasant coastal resort, in August 1895, it was not long before he became combative with the local press.
Continue reading “The Friend of Oscar Wilde”
The day before he died.
Oscar Wilde died at ten minutes to 2 PM on November 30th, 1900. We know this from a detailed letter, citing the precise time of death, written by Robert Ross who was with Wilde when he died.1 But less certain is what happened immediately before and after that moment.
Continue reading “Last Rites”
Merlin Holland’s new retrospective of the societal and family legacy of Oscar Wilde has been over two decades in the making—which is understandable given the research necessary to counter what Holland describes as “…one of the longest continuous acts of hypocrisy in British history.”
The result is a historical accounting that alternates between biography and autobiography into a 700 page feat of storytelling.
Continue reading “After Oscar”
Various Likenesses of William Theodore Peters
Including a Discovered Sketch
The young and ill-fated American poet William Theodore Peters was integral to the clique of 1890s British decadents. One fact upholding this claim is that even the doyen of the movement, Oscar Wilde, had a portrait of him hanging in his Tite Street drawing room.
But which portrait of Peters was it?
Continue reading “Peters Portraits”
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.
Continue reading “Lecture Tour 1882”
Sir Angus Wilson, CBE (1913—1991)
One of England’s first openly gay authors.
My recent article The ‘Jeweled Style’ focused on the literary device of that name “in which authors created jewel-like effects by the ordering and juxtaposition of individual elements”.1 And I noted how Lord Alfred Douglas and the poet Charles Kains Jackson had found the stylistic practice present in Oscar Wilde’s writing.
To those two observers I can now add the novelist and short story writer Angus Wilson: a kindred soul who used the same expression about Wilde’s prose over 60 years later, when he wrote:
“It is in his jewelled phrases, his poetic prose that Wilde leaves logic and abstraction behind…”
Angus Wilson was an interesting character and not a little ornate himself.
Continue reading “Angus Wilson”
In its third year, Oscariana celebrates the birth of Oscar Wilde at his childhood home and other locations in Dublin.
The fabulous festival of Cinema, Shows, Tours, and Exhibitions takes place from October 16-20, 2025.
Continue reading “Oscariana In Dublin III”
Late Victorians began to contemplate a bold, astonishing idea: that perhaps women might simply be free to dress… freely.