TRAFFICKING IN STRANGE WEBS
A Survey of Websites (2)
March 2010
__________
‘I don’t want it put straight, Leaf. I only want the key.’
‘Well, sir, you’ll be covered with cobwebs if you go into it. Why, it hasn’t been opened for nearly five years – not since his lordship died.’
Reporting on relevant websites was a feature introduced into THE OSCHOLARS from early days, being eventually established on independent pages. We rather neglected this survey recently, but all the websites listed below were revisited on 24th March 2010 and a comment has been added.
Further websites are listed and/or reviewed from different standpoints in our sections SHRINES, SOCIETIES, LIENS and LIAISONS.
We welcome nominations for any of these surveys.
TABLE OF CONTENTS : WILDE’S CONTEMPORARIES
Derelict or vanished sites are indicated by italics, and their original entries follow the main list. If they are restored on the internet, they will resume their rightful place here.
Bernhardt, Sarah
Booth, Charles
Carlyle, Thomas
Collins, Wilkie
Couperus, Louis
Crane, Walter
Douglas, Lord Alfred
Dowson, Ernest
Ellmann, Richard
Harris, Frank
Horta, Victor
Ibsen, Henrik
James, Henry
Pater, Walter
Rodenbach, Georges
Rops, Felicien
Solomon, Simeon
Symons, Arthur
Terry, Ellen
Weyman, Stanley
BERNHARDT, SARAH
First reported December 2001
§ http://www.sarah-bernhardt.com is a useful starting point for looking at Sarah Bernhardt, containing much factual material, not all to be found in any one biography. Unfortunately it is not kept up to date, so information relating to twelve months ago is still being given as current.
v Added December 2002: This site, mastered by Mark Rimmel, has been much augmented and improved and now allows viewers to be updated with changes.
v Added May 2008: As far as we can see, the last update was on 10th December 2005, and communication with readers seems to have been abolished, but the site remains a valuable one.
v Added March 2010: Nearly two years on, nothing seems to have changed.
BOOTH, CHARLES
First reported February 2002
§ Essential reading for the social background to Dorian Gray’s East End can now be found at The Charles Booth Online Archive http://booth.lse.ac.uk/, a searchable resource giving access to archive material from the Booth collections of the British Library of Political and Economic Science (the Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science)and the University of London Library. The archives of the British Library of Political and Economic Science contain the original records from Booth’s survey into life and labour in London, dating from 1886-1903. The archives of the University of London Library contain Booth family papers from 1799 to 1967. One can also usefully consult http://www.umich.edu/~risotto/
v In February 2003 we added: This elegant site was the winner of the Multi-Media and Web category, CILIP / Emerald Public Relations & Publicity Awards 2002.
v Added February 2007: This excellent site remains accessible, and the risotto is also still there to be savoured.
v Added May 2008: Fortunately both sites are still there.
v Added March 2010: And there they remain
Carlyle, Thomas
First reported January 2007
www.carlyleletters.org. In a communiqué issued on the 22nd December 2006, Brent E. Kinser (Coordinating Editor, The Carlyle Letters Online) and Duke University Press Journals announced the impending launch of ‘a new, open access, online humanities resource, The Carlyle Letters Online. This site, the electronic edition of The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle (Duke UP), will bring a project more than fifty years in the making into an environment that will make some of the most brilliant correspondence of the nineteenth century easily available to scholars online.’ The site’s front page is now in place, and the rest will follow this spring. We are advised, in somewhat less than Carlyleian prose, to ‘stay tuned for more information about the project’s final launch date.’ We remind readers that Wilde once owned Carlyle’s writing table
v Added May 2008: This site has now been completed, and is fully searchable and most attractive. New letters will be added whenever they come to light.
v Added March 2010: This splendid site is being kept up.
COLLINS, WILKIE
First reported March 2010
v www.wilkiecollins.com is the long-established website created by Paul Lewis, and must be the first call for anyone seeking information on Collins.
v http://www.digitalpixels.org/jr/wc/ provides accurate texts of the novels and stories of Wilkie Collins.
Couperus, Louis
First reported June 2003
§§ Another masterpiece of web design can be found at www.louiscouperus.nl, the homepage of the Dutch Louis Couperus Society (Louis Couperus Genootschap), the biggest literary society in The Netherlands. Webmasters Peter Hoffman and Han Peek offer an overwhelming amount of useful and scholarly information concerning Louis Couperus (1863-1923), Dutch dandy, poet and novelist. Biography and bibliography, articles, news, a secondary literature database, reviews . . . are presented in an exquisite design and accompanied by high quality photographs. The webmasters offer kind help to anyone posting questions and queries in their guestbook. This vast site has everything a visitor interested in Couperus can fancy, and holds on to a delightful exclusivity by being entirely in Dutch.
v Added May 2008: This now features on our Society page.
v Added March 2010: This site continues to be regularly.
More (or, in fact, less) Couperus can be found at www.despin.net/sites/couperus/, the website of the Couperus Museum in The Hague, Netherlands. Its most interesting feature is its agenda of exhibitions. The site is composed in Dutch but has an English summary. [Supplied by Eva Thienpont, University of Ghent.]
v Added May 2008: The e-address is now http://www.couperusmuseum.org/; none of the links into the interior from the homepage were working.
v Added March 2010: The links are now all functioning satisfactorily.
Crane, Walter
First reported June 2002
http://www.wcml.org.uk/wcrane/crane.html is a site devoted to Walter Crane (who of course illustrated The Happy Prince). Highly commended.
v Added May 2008: wcml is the excellent site of the Working Class Movement Library in Manchester. Inexplicably the Walter Crane pages have been removed.
v Added March 2010: The Crane pages can be found since January 2009 at http://www.wcml.org.uk/contents/creativity-and-culture/art/walter-crane/?keyword1=walter+crane
DOUGLAS, LORD ALFRED
First reported July 2001
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Bosie is a more than usually trivial chat site instigated by somebody calling himself Bosie Douglas. One can imagine what Lord Alfred might have said to that. Its aim is ‘To discuss Bosie as a man seperate [sic] from Oscar Wilde, and to appreciate him as the poet he was’. Founded on 3rd November 1999, it carries twenty-one messages (nine this year, none last year), many of which are about the members’ astrological signs, and none about poetry. It now has six members, one calling herself Isola Wilde.
v Added July 2002: In the last year, membership has risen from six to ten, with three new messages.
v Added July 2003: Membership is now eleven, and thirteen new messages have appeared (nine of them in April 2003, none since).
v Added May 2008: Membership is now 47 but we suspect these largely consist of Sexy Sophia and her friends. Not recommended.
v Added March 2010: This site can be regarded as done with.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LordAlfredDouglas is an enterprise that seems to be run on altogether more serious lines. Founded on 3rd January 2001, it already has thirty-nine members (there is always some overlap in membership between these different groups). Of the thirty-seven messages on the site, however, thirty-four were posted in the first three months. Both these sites suggest that interest in Douglas, distinct from Wilde, is fairly marginal.
v Added July 2002: This has risen in membership from thirty-nine to fifty-five with thirty-six new messages posted.
v Added July 2003: This group [‘Lord Alfred Douglas· Discussion of Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas “Bosie” –– poet, sonneteer, writer, and editor from 1870 to 1945’] now has seventy members, and 118 new messages have been added. This has become a real attempt to discuss Douglas.
v Added May 2008: Now with 96 members, this continues as a serious attempt to discuss Douglas, though not all the fairly infrequent messages do this successfully.
v Added March 2010: Interest has declined further, with only eight messages posted in 2009 (its heyday was 2004 with 389 messages).
Dowson, Ernest
First reported January 2002
http://www.jeffgower.com/dowson.html is an all-too-brief page devoted to Ernest Dowson.
v In January 2003 we added: Our Internet Explorer could only find the message The requested URL was not found on this server and the same was true using a different URL (http://compbio.med.wayne.edu/~jeff/EDowson/AAA.html) which is supposed to be a link from the Arthur Symons site.
v Added January 2006: This remains defunct.
v Added May 2008: This now simply brings up www.jeffgower.com, from which all trace of Dowson has been purged.
v Added March 2010: Mr Gower’s sites have vanished away but there is a splendid new Dowson site created by Philip Walker at http://www.ernestdowson.com/.
Ellmann, Richard
First reported November 2001
§ http://www.lib.utulsa.edu/Speccoll/ellmar00.htm, the site of the Richard Ellmann Papers at the McFarlin Library, Special Collections Department, University of Tulsa.
v Added November 2002: We are happy to remind readers of this site.
v Added May 2008: This has been reclassified as http://www.lib.utulsa.edu/Speccoll/collections/ellman/index.htm.
v Added March 2010: This remains in place with its main page revised on 8th January 2010.
For THE OSCHOLARS Ellmann special supplement, edited by Michèle Mendelssohn for the twentieth anniversary of Ellmann’s Oscar Wilde, click the sunflower.
Harris, Frank
First reported September 2001
§§ http://www.oddbooks.co.uk/harris is a Frank Harris site kept by Alfred Armstrong (modestly asserting that ‘These pages are the fruit of harmless drudgery’), with biographical and bibliographical material, links to other Harris sites, and links to sites for Wilde, Shaw, Lord Alfred Douglas and others who connected with Harris at various times; as well as a discussion forum. A well thought out, dignified site.
v Added in September 2002: Mr Armstrong continues to maintain and develop this site.
v Added in September 2003: This continues to flourish.
v Added in May 2008: This has been redesigned since we last looked, and Mr Armstrong continues to add material.
v Added March 2010: Although nothing has been added since September 2008, this attractive site continues in good heart.
HORTA, VICTOR
First reported May 2003
§§ http://www.hortamuseum.be is the homepage of the Brussels Horta Museum. True to its subject, the famous Art Nouveau architect and interior designer Victor Horta (1861-1947), the website boasts an exquisite design. Besides being very elegant it is also very concise -- the biography of Horta is given a mere six lines; the features include a plan of the house, a section on the Friends of the museum, the address of the Horta documentation centre and a section on the bookshop, all tiny and stylish. The plan of the house section is worth a visit: by pointing at different rooms on the plan the visitor can take a virtual look around this masterpiece of Art Nouveau. The photos are of excellent quality.[Supplied by Eva Thienpont, University of Ghent]
v Added May 2008: Essential for anyone interested in Art Nouveau.
v Added March 2010: The site flourishes. French, German and English versions are provided as well as Dutch.
IBSEN, Henrik
First reported December 2002
§ http://www.ibsensociety.liu.edu/ is the formidable site of the Ibsen Society of America.
v Added January 2006: We now report regularly on this site in our Society Page and no further updates will be given here.
James, Henry
First reported April 2002
§ We recommend http://web.bham.ac.uk/doveral/james/as a good introduction to Henry James and the other websites devoted to him.
v In April 2003 we added: With a year’s more experience of looking at websites, we can be rather more enthusiastic about this one, created by Adrian Dover, who introduces the site as follows: ‘Because there is already an excellent guide to what is available on the web, the Henry James scholar’s Guide to Web Sites*, this is not a comprehensive collection of James information. Rather the chief aim is to make available electronic texts (e-texts), suitable for the world-wide web, of some of the works not available elsewhere, particularly the tales. I have also been lead into allied scholarly reference tools, such as a concordance to my e-texts and an index to published (book) collections of the tales. These are described in more detail. I have also now provided a page of suggestions which may help you if you are completely new to Henry James’s writing, answering the question “where do I begin?”.’ * http://www2.newpaltz.edu/~hathaway/§1
v Added May 008: Where indeed? Mr Dover’s site seems to have vanished. Fortunately, the Henry James scholar’s Guide to Web Sites, the creation of Richard D. Hathaway, Professor Emeritus of English, SUNY New Paltz, flourishes. It was last updated 15th May 2008.
v Added March 2010: The above remains true, and the Hathaway site was updated as recently as 19th March 2010.
PATER, WALTER
First reported October 2002
§ http://www.ajdrake.com/etexts is an archive of “E-Texts for Victorianists”. This is a non-commercial site maintained by Alfred J. Drake (ajdrake@ajdrake.com) that offers the complete works of Walter Pater and texts by other authors. Pater is of considerable interest to C19 art historians since he was among the most prominent British critics of art and literature from 1873-1895. On offer are three (soon four) editions of The Renaissance (1873, 1877, 1910) and two of Marius the Epicurean (1885,1910).
Alfred Drake writes ‘The e-texts are based on authoritative publications, including rare first editions. The format of most of the above versions is Adobe’s PDF (portable document format), which I find ideal for the production of searchable, facsimile-like electronic texts that preserve the original’s dimensions – line height, type size, line breaks, etc., while offering “zoom” capability that makes it relatively easy to view a text on the screen. One other benefit of PDF is that when you scan a text with translation into that format as the final stage, proofreading becomes a great deal more accurate. Since I find PDF the best choice for rendering scholarly e-texts, I’ll soon be offering editions in that format only. To view PDF texts online or after you’ve downloaded them, you will need Adobe’s free Acrobat Reader, but that program is easy to obtain and install – a hyperlink to the relevant Adobe page is included after every PDF version on my site. So if you like e-texts, drop by E-Texts for Victorianists!
‘One final note – if you can think of important C19 texts in your field that would be good to have in electronic format (either because they are hard to find or simply because it would be convenient to search the text electronically), send me a short list including the best edition from which to work, and I’ll add what I can to my projects list.’
v Added October 2003: This too has a new address http://www.victorianprose.org/. Texts include Dorian Gray and Intentions in early versions.
v Added May 2008: No new Wilde texts, but Dr Drake’s project goes on.
v Added March 2010: Or does it ? The texts listed ar Arnold, Matthew (Culture and Anarchy, On Translating Homer...); Carlyle, Thomas (Past and Present); Froude, James Anthony (English in the West Indies, Ch. 5); Newman, Francis W. (Homeric Translation in Theory and Practice); Newman, J. H. (Cardinal) (Discourses on ... University Education); Pater, Walter Horatio (Complete Works, with earlier editions); Thomas, J.J. (Froudacity); Wilde, Oscar. (Dorian Gray, Intentions in early versions); but the list of those to be added is dated December 2003.
Rodenbach, George
First reported April 2003
http://users.belgacom.net/rodenbach/index.html#deb is a website that concerns itself with Georges Rodenbach (1855-1898), probably best known as the author of Bruges-la-Morte. It teaches us, among other things, that Rodenbach in Paris frequented the same circles as Wilde but somehow managed to more favourably impress Mallarmé, Montesquiou, Proust, Edmond de Goncourt and Huysmans than his Irish colleague. This website, hosted by (photographer?) Dominique Rodenbach, offers a rather artistic and dreamy combination of fragments from Rodenbach’s writings with pictures old and new collected or taken by the webmaster. It is a pity that the bad quality of several of the scans detracts from the beauty of the whole. The site features, besides texts, bibliographies and links, a Rodenbach walk in Bruges and a link to the Rodenbach brewery, the brewers being related to the poet. (NOTE for those readers who are Belgian beer ignoramuses: Rodenbach is a beer that is ideally consumed at the seaside and in combination with a dish of freshly caught peel-them-yourself shrimps.) [Supplied by Eva Thienpont, University of Ghent]
v Added May 2008: This still answers to Dr Thienpont’s description.
v Added March 2010: This excellent site is still there.
Rops, Félicien
First reported March 2003
§§ www.ciger.be/rops/index.shtml.en is the excellent (award-winning) website of the Félicien Rops Museum in Namur, Belgium. It offers a very informative virtual tour of the museum, with attention to techniques and themes, biographical facts and the museum building and its surroundings. The techniques section contains several high-quality pictures that can be enlarged for closer inspection and places Rops’ etchings, drawings and paintings in their artistic context. There is a short biography of Rops (1833-1898) that consists entirely of quotes and a longer one that provides contexts, facts and photos. This beautifully designed site is accessible in both French and English and is well worth a visit. [Supplied by Eva Thienpont, University of Ghent.]
v And remains so in March 2007.
v Added May 2008: And still.
v Added March 2010: This site has been relocated to http://www.museerops.be/.
Solomon, Simeon
Jeff Fendall reminded us that ‘In De Profundis, Wilde wrote: “That all my charming things were to be sold: my Burne-Jones drawings; my Whistler drawings; my Monticelli; my Simeon Solomons; my china, my Library...”’
First reported October 2001
§§§ http://www.fau.edu/solomon/ is the address of a new Simeon Solomon Research Archive maintained by Roberto Ferrari of Florida Atlantic University’s Wimberly Library and editor of a recent annotated bibliography on Solomon. This is a continuing scholarly project that will gradually include more annotations, full-text documents, digital images, and a brief biography of Solomon. An important and professional site.
v Added October 2002: In March 2002, the Simeon Solomon Research Archive received the first ARLIS/NAWorldwide Books Electronic Publication Award for outstanding electronic publication. It was last updated on 1st April.
v Added October 2003: This was last updated on 15th April 2003, and continues to expand
v Added May 2008: This is now at http://www.simeonsolomon.org/, and was last updated 4th September 2007
v Added March 2010: No further updates.
First reported December 2001
§ http://www.988.com/Artists/Solomon_Simeon.htm gives further information about Simeon Solomon.
v Added April 2002: This has now been re-addressed as http://www.988.com/artists/solomon_simeon.php, and lists 52 Simeon Solomon websites.
v Added December 2002: This has grown to 80 sites.
v Added May 2008: This has grown to 94 sites.
v Added March 2010: This could not be accessed, and a superficial look using a a search engine failed to find it.
Symons, Arthur
First reported January 2002
§ http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~simmers/symons1.htm is an ambitious site dedicated to Arthur Symons (although one is perturbed by the reference to Dorian Grey).
v In January 2003 we added: We retain our enthusiasm for this well-maintained site, now slightly enlarged and corrected. Its author, George Simmers, reveals little about himself save that he edits a poetry magazine called Snakeskin. It is also clear that he is a Max Beerbohm enthusiast.
v Added January 2007: This is clearly kept updated though Dorian remains grey and the link to the Ernest Dowson page (see above) still brings no result. A useful beginner’s site for Symons.
v Added May 2008: No changes here.
v Added March 2010: As far as one can tell, this site has had no new material recently.
Weyman, Stanley
First reported January 2007
http://manybooks.net/authors/weymanst.html. Stanley Weyman (1855-1928), a contemporary of Wilde at Oxford, was a once fashionable historical novelist with a penchant for French settings. Some research into his life might bring up visits to Paris in the fin-de-siècle. According to Wikipedia ‘While for years his best-selling historical romances enchanted thousands of readers — Robert Louis Stevenson and Oscar Wilde were among his enthusiastic readers — today his books are mostly neglected.’ This uncluttered site offers free down-loads of the following of Weyman’s books:
The Castle Inn, 1898
Count Hannibal A Romance of the Court of France, 1901
From the Memoirs of a Minister of France, 1893
A Gentleman of France, Being the Memoirs of Gaston de Bonne Sieur de Marsac, 1893
The House of the Wolf, A Romance, 1890
The Long Night, 1903
Under the Red Robe, 1894
v Added May 2008: This site is still there, but no further books by Weyman have been added.
v Added March 2010: More of Weyman’s books have now been uploaded, The Man in Black, 1894, In Kings' Byways, 1902, and The Wild Geese, 1908.
DERELICT, DELETED OR NOT TO BE FOUND
Terry, Ellen
First reported May 2003
http://www.ellenterry.org/ is a new site established by Rian Keating as a tribute to Ellen Terry. She is shown as Henrietta Maria in W.G. Wills’ Charles I, a part which inspired one of Wilde’s three poems on her acting.
v Added May 2008: This site seems to have been taken over by a commercial group that has precious little to do with Ellen Terry. Not recommended.
v Added March 2010: This has now vanished completely.
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