Tag: poetry

Article

The Spirit Lamp

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THE SPIRIT LAMP
“The Desiderata of Collectors”

The Spirit Lamp was an Oxford University magazine of the 1890s described by the Pall Mall Gazette at the time as “free from the narrowness and banality which mark the greater part of English university literature and has a pleasing air of cultured bohemianism.”1

The magazine ran to 15 issues in total and became associated with Oscar Wilde—particularly the last six which were edited by Alfred Douglas during whose tenure the “cultured bohemianism” evolved into decadent homoeroticism.

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Article

Three Times Tried—II

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Cover page of The Spirt Lamp, Vol. 2 No. 4. December 6, 1892.
From The Spirt Lamp, Vol. 2 No. 4. December 6, 1892.

The New Remorse

Fourth in series of articles adapted from a larger text by the present author that appeared in the July 2022 (No. 61) edition of the ‘The Wildean’, the journal of the Oscar Wilde Society.

Previous articles in this series

  1. A handwritten sonnet by Oscar Wilde appears on the Antiques Roadshow,
  2. A critical analysis of the poem.
  3. Three Times Tried—I: The poem’s first appearance as Un Amant De Nos Jours.

In this article we shall look at the second appearance of Wilde’s sonnet in 1892.

As had been the case with its first publication, five years earlier in The Court and Society Review, it was Wilde’s probable intention for the sentiment to herald a new romantic interest.

On this occasion, the poem reemerged shortly after he met his preeminent male paramour Lord Alfred Douglas—who was to become Wilde’s lover and a consequential influence over his life, work, and eventual fate—indeed the poem was republished by Douglas himself not long after Wilde had presented it to him.

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Article

Three Times Tried—I

Oscar Wilde Blog3 Comments
The poem as it appeared in The Court and Society Review, 1877.
Image courtesy of the Master and Fellows of University College Oxford: Ross b.9 (3).

Un Amant De Nos Jours

Third in series of articles adapted from a larger text by the present author that appeared in the July 2022 (No. 61) edition of the ‘The Wildean’, the journal of the Oscar Wilde Society.

In the first article in this series we saw how a handwritten sonnet by Oscar Wilde, which came to light during a 2015 edition of the Antiques Roadshow, was making its third appearance in Wilde’s life—again with the probable intention of heralding a new love interest.

In this article we shall look briefly at the poem’s first appearance in 1887 at a crucial time during Wilde’s marriage to his wife Constance.

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Article

Oscar Wilde on Irish Poets

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Oscar Wilde’s lecture in San Francisco on Irish Poets

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.

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