(Author’s Collection)
THE KELLY SKETCH OF OSCAR WILDE — REVISITED
In 1905 James Edward Kelly found himself in the middle of an Oscar Wilde resurgence.
In the theatre the comedies were still being revived, and 1905 also saw the first English production of Wilde’s French tragedy Salomé — with separate arrangements under way for Richard Strauss’s opera.
In the literary world, there was a marked upsurge in Wilde-related publications, many of them unauthorized. At the center of the authorized activity was Wilde’s literary executor, Robert Ross.
In February 1905, Ross edited an expurgated edition of De Profundis, which was brought out by Methuen & Co. in the UK and — in the same month — by G. P. Putnam’s Sons as the first American edition complete with Ross’s preface. It was this Putnam edition that gave James E. Kelly cause to revisit the sketch he had made of Oscar Wilde during his lecture tour of 1882.
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