🌻 The Leading Online Digest of Oscar Wilde Studies
There is a pleasing symmetry in the idea of the flamboyant Napoleon Sarony photographing Oscar Wilde because they were both specialists in posing—albeit from opposing ends of the camera.
So it is not surprising that they also had parallel views about posing.
Continue reading “The Rest Is History”
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.
Continue reading “Bridgeton, NJ”
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.
Continue reading “I Can Wait (Revisited)”
—Reviewed by: John Cooper—
As its title suggests, Making Oscar Wilde is an attempt to establish a premise for the shaping of Oscar Wilde’s persona—the latest in a history of such perspectives which has included disquisitions of his Irish roots, his American experience, his men, his women, his friends, his enemies, his wit, his letters, his published works, his unpublished works, his recorded life, his unrecorded life, and, for good measure, his legacy after life.
Now Michèle Mendelssohn takes a potentially useful and probably unique view through the prism of Wilde’s racial profile. On surface reading the work has much to commend it—but to discover whether it works as a construction we will have to disassemble it.
Continue reading “Making (Up) Oscar Wilde”
After traveling across the vast expanses of the American south for more than a month, lecturing in 18 cities, Wilde returned to New York for some rest and relaxation with friends at the exclusive Summer resorts of the north-east.
Continue reading “Mountain Lion”
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.
Continue reading “Narragansett Pier”
You could be forgiven for thinking that a blog about Oscar Wilde might not be the most objective forum for reviewing a film about Oscar Wilde—perhaps being too close to its subject to see it as one would ordinarily.
However, the opposite turns out to be true about The Happy Prince (2018) because it is not an ordinary film; and it warrants a specialist view being itself the work of an Oscar Wilde specialist.
Rupert Everett has played Wilde’s fictional characters both on stage and in film; he has already appeared as Oscar Wilde himself in David Hare’s The Judas Kiss on both sides of the Atlantic; and, after spending an age poring over Wilde’s works in homage to his patron saint, Everett has spent the last ten years of his life taking on a tide of personal and industry challenges in order to craft this film.
It is an effort that lays bare a more compelling reason why the film should not be regarded as just another movie. And it is a reason Everett shares with the artist Basil Hallward (in Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray) who accepted that his portrait of Dorian was not just another painting. He confessed: “I have put too much of myself into it.”
Wilde explained this characteristically philosophical view of art when he said:
“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
So it is with Everett, whose devotion during a decade of writing, directing, and now acting in a lifetime passion, might also be regarded as his art. Certainly, The Happy Prince is a highly personalized vision: a dark introspection with the protagonist in almost every scene.
So the inference is that we should not approach the film routinely from the outside in, but rather the other way around. Taken on those terms, there is much to admire, not only for the specialist but for the generalist viewer.
Let us look at it, as Everett did, through that lens.
Continue reading “The Happy Prince—(2018)”
It was time for the press screening of The Happy Prince, Rupert Everett’s new bio-pic of Oscar Wilde’s post-prison depression, to be shown at the headquarters of Sony Pictures in New York ahead of its general release in the U.S. later in the month.
I decided to prepare in a manner becoming the movie.
Continue reading “The Green Hour”
Here are Oscar and Bosie in May 1893 posing at the studio of the photographer Gillman & Co. of Oxford, whose establishment was at 107 St Aldate’s Street. That location today is a Ladbrokes Off Track Betting Shop.
This well known picture is seemingly unposed: the two are both smoking and seemingly distant—perhaps between arguments.
But upon inspection you’ll see that, in keeping with their lives, all was not as it seems.
Continue reading “Your Slim Gilt Sole”
It has long been assumed that all of the 1882 photographs of Oscar Wilde by Napoleon Sarony were taken during the same visit to his studio. Indeed, in all of Wilde studies there does not appear to be any record of an assertion to the contrary.
However, there is a convincing case to be made that the LAST FOUR photographs were taken at a later date.