Tag: women’s rights

Announcement

Dress Lecture

Oscar Wilde Blog2 Comments

Free Online Lecture

Oscar Wilde on Dress
by John Cooper

DATE: Saturday, December 6 at 2pm EST
(Eastern Standard Time in the US is five hours behind GMT)

Click here to Register: Zoom Webinar.

Welcome to the sixth season of online lectures presented by the Victorian Society in America inspired by their internationally-acclaimed Summer Schools.

This season’s speakers will address a wide variety of subjects including Los Angeles in the Victorian era, the evolution of resort architecture, Oscar Wilde’s philosophy on dress and fashion, a behind-the-scenes look at the preservation of Gilded Age Newport, the Saturday Evening Girls’ club and the Paul Revere Pottery, and the work of British preservationist and architectural historian Gavin Stamp.

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Article · News

On Dress

Oscar Wilde Blog2 Comments

Oscar Wilde On Dress
Now in a New Updated and Expanded Artisan Edition.

www.oscarwildeondress.com

Back in 2012 I rediscovered Oscar Wilde’s essay “The Philosophy of Dress” and published it the following year in a limited hardback bibliophile edition. That publication represented the essay’s first appearance in book form, and the first posthumous release of a lost work by Wilde.

I am now pleased to introduce the book in an updated and expanded softcover artisan edition.

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Article

Doubtful as Men

Oscar Wilde Blog5 Comments
effete
How the effeminate Oscar Wilde
was likened to women in 1882

During his lecture tour of America in 1882, Oscar Wilde was often described in interviews and articles as effeminate.

It has often been thought that Oscar was acting the part of the effeminate; certainly, he was playing up to it: his dress and manner coinciding with the “namby-pamby” image of Bunthorne from Gilbert & Sullivan’s Patience that preceded him.

But, given our knowledge that Wilde continued to display the same effeminate sensibilities throughout his life, how much of his 1882 pose was an act?

Perhaps rather than his being landed with an effeminate role, Wilde gravitated towards it.

Indeed, he portrayed his role so convincingly that, as we shall discover, the ever-anticipatory Wilde was conceptualized as female.

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