Tag: The Free Library of Philadelphia

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Philadelphia Freedom

Oscar Wilde Blog1 Comment

The Digital Collection of Oscar Wilde
Documents at The Philadelphia Free Library

Readers will recall my visit to the New York Antiquarian Book Fair a couple of years ago where I was offered a very rare Oscar Wilde document.

It was a typescript of the (originally) unpublished portions of Wilde’s passive-aggressive prison masterpiece De Profundis.

It was prepared by Wilde’s literary executor, Robert Ross, for use in the 1913 trial when Lord Alfred Douglas (Oscar’s lover Bosie) sued a young Arthur Ransome for having the temerity to imply that a person he didn’t name just might have had a hand in Wilde’s downfall.

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Salomé

Oscar Wilde Blog5 Comments
Gustave Moreau’s 1876 SalomĂ© dansant devant HĂ©rode (Salome dancing before Herod) descriptions of which in Joris-Karl Huysmans’s Ă€ rebours (Against Nature) had stimulated Wilde’s interest in the subject.
The Only Known Typescript of Wilde’s FRENCH Salome

I have somewhat of a preoccupation with the use of primary sources, and sources don’t come any more primary than the recent discoveries of Wildeana that were made at the Free Library of Philadelphia prior to the Oscar Wilde season early this year.

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