An Electronic Journal for the Exchange of Information

on Current Research, Publications and Productions

Concerning

Oscar Wilde and His Worlds

Issue no 50 : May / June 2009

oscholars@gmail.com

We have chosen as this issue’s frontispiece an image of Wilde by Ericka Bacque, of www.RatStarArts.com

EDITORIAL PAGE

Navigating THE OSCHOLARS

Since November 2007 this page has been split into two sections.  SECTION I contains our Editorial, short pieces that we hope will interest readers, and innovations.  SECTION II is a Guide or site-map to what will be found on other pages of THE OSCHOLARS with explanatory notes and links to those pages (formerly to be found on the Editorial page).  Each section is prefaced by a Table of Contents with hyper links to the Contents themselves.  For Section I, please read on. 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS I: ITEMS ON THIS PAGE
I.  NEWS from the Editor	IV. ON THE CURRICULUM: TEACHING AND RESEARCHING WILDE, THE FIN-DE-SIÈCLE, ÆSTHETICISM AND DECADENCE	XI.  WEB FOOT NOTES
II.  In the LIBRARY	V.  THE CRITIC AS CRITIC: Reviews	XII.  OGRAPHIES
III.  NEWS, NOTES & QUERIES	VI. OSCAR WILDE AND THE KINEMATOGRAPH	XIII. MAD, SCARLET MUSIC
1. Robert Ross and De Profundis	VII. LETTERS FROM OUR EDITORS	XIV.  NEVER SPEAKING DISRESPECTFULLY: THE OSCAR WILDE SOCIETIES
2. Fitzgerald Exhibition	VIII.  BEING TALKED ABOUT: CONFERENCES & CALLS FOR PAPERS	XV. COLOUR SUPPLEMENT
4.   An Oscar Wilde Collection	IX.  OSCAR IN POPULAR CULTURE /WILDE AS UNPOPULAR CULTURE	XVI. OUR FAMILY OF JOURNALS
5. The 1890s Archive	X.  THE POETIC LEGACY	XVII. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS II : GUIDE TO ALL PAGES Click  for the Guide itself, or GO to reach the pages directly
A Giant’s Garden		Guidance for submissions		Reading Groups		Tables of Contents
Awards		The Latchkey		The Reception of Wilde in Europe		Teleny Revisited
Being Talking About		Library		Rue des Beaux Arts		Upstage
Bibliographies		Mad, Scarlet Music		Shavings		Visions
Conferences, Lectures		May I Say Nothing?		The Sibyl		Wilde Societies
Editorial, News & Notes [previous issue]		Moorings		Society News		Appendices
Editorial Team		Publications		Some Sell & Others Buy
The Eighth Lamp		The Rack and The Press		Special Issues
Going Wilde		Ravenna		Strange Webs

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As usual, names emboldened in the text are those of subscribers to THE OSCHOLARS, who may be contacted through oscholars@gmail.com.  Text in blue can be clicked for navigation.

I. NEWS FROM THE EDITOR

An Oscar Wilde Centenary

The weekend of 18th/19th July 2009 marks the centenary of the transfer of Wilde’s remains from Bagneux cemetery to Père Lachaise. The Société Oscar Wilde en France is arranging appropriate commemoration, and details are given and updated in our forum. Any reader who chances to be in Paris, is of course welcome to attend. We meet at the Gambetta Gate of Père Lachaise (three minutes from métro Gambetta NOT métro Père Lachaise) at 15h00.

In 1909 Robbie Ross printed a leaflet to mark the moment, and Mr Merlin Holland has very kindly made available to us a scan of this in .pdf. This is being posted in our LIBRARY.

This anniversary comes after the very welcome news that following a poll organised by the Paris City Council to nominate one French and one European writer after whom to name a street or square was won by Romain Gary and – Oscar Wilde ! The campaign was orchestrated by the Société Oscar Wilde en France and ourselves. Voting figures have not yet been released, and the whole project has disappeared into the bowels of the Hôtel de Ville. We will report further, on our forum immediately and subsequently here, when we know more.

Innovations

We have continued to expand our editorial team. We have been joined by Anna Orhanen (University of Turku) and Pilvi Rajmaë (University of Tartu) as Editors for Finland and Estonia respectively. Anna’s first Letter from Finland appears below. Also new to the team are Claire Charlotte McKechnie (University of Edinburgh), who takes over our survey of Reading Groups, and Helena Gurfinkel (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville), who will be running our theatre supplement UPSTAGE from now on.

A Giant’s Garden

This spring saw the publication of the third of our Special Issues, A Giant’s Garden, edited by Naomi Wood. This is the first anthology ever devoted to Wilde’s ‘fairy tales’, or ‘wonder tales’, to use a preferable term. As with our other Special Issues, new essays are welcome, so this is both an announcement and a Call for Papers.

New content appears on our website nearly every day, and we announce this and other matters on our ‘yahoo’ subsidiary. The number of our readers who have joined this has been growing, and it is increasingly our medium for making announcements in the place of mass mailings, which more and more fall foul of anti-spam traps either at the sending or receiving end. We do urge readers to sign up to this group. We have, however, discontinued our NOTICEBOARD for want of use.  The ‘yahoo’ forum can be reached via its icon.

II. THE OSCHOLARS LIBRARY

From time to time, we invite readers and others who have published articles on Wilde in anthologies or journals that are only readily accessible in university libraries (and not always then) to republish them (amended if desired) on THE OSCHOLARS website. We also republish older articles on Wilde from anthologies and festchriften, made obsolete by the march of scholarship, but which may still have some value in charting how he was viewed by earlier writers.

In September 2007, we began a year-long project of putting such articles on line at the rate of one a week, and were very happy with the response. This systematic project has now come to an end, but we continue to put articles up on an ad hoc basis. These appear in our section called LIBRARY, which now contains the largest collection of essays on Wilde so far assembled.  Its logo, which can be clicked for access, is

This will bring you to a Table of Contents, arranged thematically, from which you can link to each article.  A subsection, IN OTHER BOOKCASES, is similarly arranged but gives links to articles that appear elsewhere on the internet.

We also link to French language articles similarly republished in rue des beaux-arts.

These articles are copyright to their authors, and thus the usual rules for citation and against further publication apply.

---

New postings are announced on our discussion forum

III. FREQUENTING THE SOCIETY OF THE AGED AND WELL-INFORMED: NEWS, NOTES, QUERIES.

A Note on Robert Ross and De Profundis

D.C. Rose

It is of course universally known that the long letter that Wilde wrote in prison to Lord Alfred Douglas was entrusted by Wilde when he was released to Robbie Ross, with instructions to have typewritten copies made, and that Ross kept the MS until depositing it the British Museum.a In 1904, Ross provided the German scholar Max Meyerfeld with what Jonathan Fryer describes a ‘heavily edited text’b which Meyerfeld translated and published in the Neue Rundschau. It was then further published in book form (De Profundis. Auf zeichungen und Briefe aus dem Zuchthaus in Reading) by S. Fischer Verlag of Berlin in January 1905.c There were two versions of this, one in Roman and one in Gothic script. In the same month Mercure de France published a French translation by Henry-D. Davray.d Both these editions preceded the English edition, which Methuen published in February 1905.

This edition was subsequently reprinted many times, and was the only text available until the one published by Vyvyan Holland in 1948, which restored most of the passages omitted by Ross. Further corrections were made by Rupert Hart-Davis in his 1962 collected letters, and more were made in the expanded edition edited by Merlin Holland in 1997. Nobody would now cite the Ross edition for any critical or biographical reasons as part of Wilde studies, though obviously it has a bibliographical interest, and it may be used for various purposes as a variorum or genetic text.

The bibliographical interest may be indicated. First, we need to know if Meyerfeld and Davray worked from the same English text, and whether it was this text that Ross submitted to Methuen. Then, given that Wilde had been dead for less than five years, and that the received view is that nobody in Edwardian England would have cared to speak his name, the book’s publishing history charts an extraordinary success – although of course this cannot be measured precisely without knowing the size of each reprint. Before the end of 1905 it had reached its fifth edition and a sixth edition followed in 1906. In 1907 four further editions followed, with eleventh and twelfth editions published in 1908. There followed an innovation: the thirteenth edition, also of 1908, was published ‘with additional matter’, and the fourteenth edition of 1909 and the fifteenth edition of 1911 were both flagged as carrying additional matter. On 6th April 1911 the shilling edition was published as the sixteenth ‘without additional matter’, and a similar tag marks the subsequent shilling editions of 1911, numbered as the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-first and twenty-second editions. 1912 saw the twenty-third and twenty-fourth editions, also at a shilling and ‘without additional material. The 1913 edition, again ‘with additional matter’ was published at 5/-, but the shilling editions were resumed in 1913 with the twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth editions, ‘without additional matter’. This list, and the preface below, is taken from my copy of the twenty-ninth edition, which is undated.

As the Holland and Hart-Davis editions are in copyright, web editions continue to perpetuate the Ross edition, so the identification of the ‘additional matter’ is of some importance, but this needs a closer scrutiny than is intended by this brief introduction to the subject.

Robert Ross’s Preface to De Profundis is as follows. I have indicated the pages between ‘slashes’ /. The capitalization and italicization are as in the edition.

p.v. For a long time considerable curiosity has been expressed about the manuscript of DE PROFUNDIS, which was known to be in my possession, the author having mentioned its existence to many other friends. The book requires little introduction and scarcely any explanation. I have only to record that it was written by my friend during the last months of his imprisonment, that it was the only work he wrote while in prison, and the last work in prose he ever wrote. (The ‘Ballad /p.vi/ of Reading Gaol’ was not composed nor even planned until he had regained his liberty.)

In sending me instructions with regard to the publication of DE PROFUNDIS, Oscar Wilde wrote:-

‘I don’t defend my conduct. I explain it. Also here are in my letter certain passages which deal with my mental development in prison, and the inevitable evolution of my character and intellectual attitude towards life that has taken place; and I want you and others who still stand by me and have affection for me to know exactly in what mood and manner I hope to face the world. Of course, from one point of view, I know that on the day of my release /p.vii/ I shall merely be passing from one prison into another, and there are times when the whole world seems to me no larger than my cell, and as full of terror for me. Still I believe that at the beginning God made a world for each separate man, and in that world, which is within us, one should seek to live. At any rate you will read those parts of my letter with less pain than the others. Of course I need not remind you how fluid a thing thought is within me – with us all – and of what an evanescent substance are our emotions made. Still I do see a sort of possible goal towards which, through art, I may progress.

‘Prison life makes one see people and things as they really are. That /p.viii/ is why it turns one to stone. It is the people outside who are deceived by the illusions of a life in constant motion. They revolve with life and contribute to its unreality. We who are immobile both see and know.

‘Whether or not the letter does good to narrow natures and hectic brains, to me it has done good. I have “cleansed my bosom of much perilous stuff”. I need not remind you that mere expression is to an artist the supreme and only mode of life. It is by utterance that we live. Of the many, many things for which I have to thank the Governor there is none for which I am more grateful than for his permission to write fully to you, and as at great a length as I /p.ix/ desire. For nearly two years I have had within a growing burden of bitterness, of much of which I have now got rid. On the other side of the prison wall there are some poor black soot-besmirched trees which are just breaking out into buds of an almost shrill green. I know quite well what they are going through. They are finding expression.’

I venture to hope that DE PROFUNDIS, which renders so vividly, and so painfully, the effect of a social débâcle and imprisonment of a highly intellectual and artificial nature, will give many readers a different impression of the witty and delightful writer.

ROBERT ROSS

Jonathan Fryer asserts that ‘it never seems to have crossed Robbie’s mind that many people would jump to the conclusion that this great, passionate epistle had actually been addressed to himself’, which suggest a good deal of naivety. The sentence that Ross quotes from Wilde – ‘Of the many, many things for which I have to thank the Governor there is none for which I am more grateful than for his permission to write fully to you, and as at great a length as I desire’e – leaves a very clear impression that Wilde wrote De Profundis as a letter to Ross, and that it was taken as such by the public, and by Lord Alfred Douglas, until the truth came out with Arthur Ransome’s book on Wilde in 1912, is unsurprising. Although the existence of the MS De Profundis was thus revealed, the MS itself lay under an embargo, so the Ross edition and its translations held the ground until 1948. Post 1948 translations presumably then used the Holland edition, and the Hart-Davis edition after 1962, though this requires verification.

a. See Merlin Holland: ‘The Stormy History of De Profundis’, The Wildean 28, January 2006.

b. Jonathan Fryer: Robert Ross, Oscar Wilde’s Devoted Friend. London: Constable 2000 p.182

c. This was reprinted in 1907, 1908, 1909. For the 1909 edition (De Profundis. Neue deutsche Ausgabe), see Horst Schroeder: ‘The Importance of Reading Max’, The Wildean 28, January 2006 pp.79-83. A new German version by Ernst Zingg was published by Neuenschwander’sche Buchdr. und Verlagsbuchh. in 1937 and another by Hedda Soellner for Suhrkamp with an introduction by Norbert Kohl in 1984. This translation was also used in the Diogenes edition of 1987 with an afterword ‘Über De Profundis’ by Gisela Hesse.

d. A new French version, by Cécil Georges-Bazile, was published in Paris by André Delpeuch in 1925; then by Jacques Bour for Stock in 1973 and by Léo Lack, also for Stock, in 1975. Gallimard published a French version by Jean Gattégno, revised by Jean Besson, in 1992 and this forms the Pléiade edition of 1996. Stock and Gallimard continue to reprint these translations, but they have perhaps been superseded by Pascal Aquien’s translation for Flammarion in 2008.

e. Fryer p.183. Fryer quotes most Wilde’s letter to Ross, but not this sentence.

Edward Fitzgerald and Omar Khayyam at the Harry Ransom Center

This year, 2009, marks the 150th anniversary of Edward FitzGerald's landmark translation of the poetry of the medieval Persian astronomer Omar Khayyam. The verses, about mortality, fate and doubt became an unprecedented popular phenomenon in nineteenth and twentieth century England and America but, according to a highly contentious statement by the HRC, have since fallen into obscurity. Featuring 200 items from the Harry Ransom Center's extensive collection the new exhibition, to be held from February 3 until August 2, narrates The Rubaiyat's history through various formats such as Persian manuscripts, a first edition of FitzGerald's translation. In addition there will be exquisite bindings, miniature editions and rare advertisements for 'Omar'-brand products and illustrated parodies.

The 1890s Online

The 1890s Online is designed to facilitate the scholarly study of fin-de-siècle culture, based at Ryerson University. The archive focuses on visual/verbal/aural relations in a decade significant for its developments in print — book design, typography, illustration, photography, periodicals, newspapers, posters, playbills and advertising — as well as for its developments in the performance arts — music hall, theatre, and the emerging technologies of cinema. In its ideally envisioned form, The 1890s Online will include the tools for complex searches and comparisons of the period's images and texts as well as searchable audio links to its songs, sounds, and speeches. The archive is overseen by an international editorial board of scholars with expertise in the literature, art, and culture of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Essays cover Aubrey Beardsley, Ella D'Arcy, Marion Hepworth Dixon, George Egerton, Kenneth Grahame, Carl Hentschel, George Moore, Joseph Swan and ‘Other people of the 1890s will populate this section over time.’ Click here to learn more.

· We wrote in March 2009 that the site seems to be have been stationary for some time, and this is still true in June.

An Oscar Wilde Collection

Most readers will have read of the recent donation to the Morgan Library in New York. We quote here from the very full account given by James Reginato in Wmagazine.com, May 2009.

Last fall New York’s Morgan Library & Museum received an astonishing present: a handsome album bound in red Morocco leather with a coat of arms stamped in gilt. Inside was the real treasure: a long-lost collection of Oscar Wilde’s manuscripts and letters, including the earliest surviving note written to his great love, Lord Alfred Douglas, known as Bosie. This spring, as visitors to the museum admire the volume in its vitrine, where it is part of a show of important recent acquisitions, a select group of fortunate institutions and individuals, including David Rockefeller, Jayne Wrightsman, Valentino and several Wilde scholars, will be receiving copies of a magnificently produced facsimile edition. “Almost no one does this sort of thing today,” says Christine Nelson, the Morgan’s curator of literary and historical manuscripts, of the painstaking reproduction. “It’s something that Pierpont Morgan would have done.”

Both the original and the facsimile edition were the final gifts of a remarkable woman, Lúcia Moreira Salles, a Brazilian philanthropist who died in January after a long battle with cancer. Still beautiful at 70, she passed away at a São Paulo hospital, where she was registered under an assumed name to avoid press. Born to a middle-class family in Porto Alegre, a city in southern Brazil, she learned French and moved to Paris in the early Sixties to work as a model. Her natural elegance and handsome dark looks caught the attention of Coco Chanel, who made her the house model. In the early Seventies she became both a muse and an international public relations liaison for Valentino, with whom she remained close until her death. “She was a perfect woman,” says the designer. “Everything she did was extremely refined and elegant. At the same time, she was very adorable, very warm. She was like my sister.”

Lúcia left behind her career in fashion in 1986, when she married banker and diplomat Walther Moreira Salles. Twice ambassador to the U.S., he was one of the wealthiest men in Brazil and a passionate collector in several fields, including that of rare books. With Lúcia, who shared his interests, he acquired the Wilde volume in the late Eighties from a source that remains unknown. (Lúcia couldn’t remember and passed away before the invoice could be found.) In the years following her husband’s death in 2001, Lúcia began to think about donating the book to an appropriate institution; she settled on the Morgan Library because of the strength of its other Wilde holdings and its commitment to scholarship. In 2005, during a conversation with her close friend Juan Pablo Queiroz, a young Argentine publisher, she decided to produce a facsimile edition before parting with the treasure. On her behalf, Queiroz contacted Merlin Holland, a leading Wilde scholar and the author’s only grandson, for guidance.

When Holland first heard about the book, he had doubts about its authenticity. “It seemed too good to be true,” he recalls on the phone from his home in the Burgundy region of France. “There have been so many forgeries. I thought, What are the chances of an unknown Wilde manuscript coming up?” But one detail gave Holland cause to reconsider: that gold coat of arms on the red binding. Nearly a decade earlier, while researching at Duke University, he had come across a similarly bound edition of Wilde’s papers. The coat of arms—a shield flanked by two winged horses over the motto “Forward”—was that of the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Bosie and the man who effectively destroyed Wilde.

Enraged by his son’s relationship, the Marquess visited Wilde’s London club in 1895, leaving a message with the porter accusing Wilde of being a sodomite. Goaded on by Bosie, who loathed his father, Wilde brought a libel action against the Marquess. With two of his plays running on the West End, Wilde was at the peak of his success and probably felt indestructible, but the suit backfired on him. It was withdrawn, and the Crown then brought charges of gross indecency against the writer. He was convicted, and after serving two years’ hard labor, he exiled himself to Paris, where he died of cerebral meningitis in 1900.

The scandal, which convulsed Victorian society, naturally shook the Wilde family. Constance, Wilde’s wife, who remained largely loyal to him, settled with their sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, in Genoa, Italy, and changed their surname to Holland. Merlin, Vyvyan’s only child, coedited The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde (2000) and authored several books on his grandfather’s work. Now, at 63, he’s writing a more personal book that he plans to title After Oscar: A Legacy of Scandal. “It’s a look,” he says, “at how the echoes of that disastrous court case in 1895 continued to influence the lives of his friends, his enemies and, most of all, his family.”

While Bosie outlived his lover by nearly a half century, his was hardly a happy life. The third son of the Marquess, he inherited some money but went bankrupt in 1913. In his later years he was supported by his nephew, Francis, who became the 11th Marquess of Queensberry. As Holland recalls, “Bosie made overtures to my father, but he did not respond.”

Following Bosie’s death in 1945, however, the enmity between the Hollands and the Queensberrys finally thawed. “My father got to know Francis, probably out of curiosity, and the two gentlemen became close,” Holland says. Francis also developed an interest in the families’ mingled history and acquired a collection of Wilde’s signed books and papers, many of which had been sold at a sheriff’s sale after Wilde went to jail.

To confirm that the Moreira Salles’ volume was indeed part of Francis’s cache, Holland called a trusted London book dealer, Edward Maggs, to ask if he knew how Francis’s library had been dispersed. Maggs revealed that he’d bought the volume himself, for stock, at Sotheby’s in 1952, but he couldn’t remember when or to whom he’d sold it. The book’s whereabouts for the next three decades remain a mystery.

Beginning in the fall of 2006, Holland made several trips to New York, where Moreira Salles owned a palatial apartment in the famed River House. He was somewhat bewildered upon first seeing the book, as the letters and manuscripts had been bound in no particular order, but when he rearranged the pages chronologically he was stunned by the insight they provided. “Here were writings from the very earliest stages of [Wilde’s] life to just six months before his downfall, which revealed many aspects of his creativity,” he says.

Nelson saw the volume for the first time this past September at River House. “I was in tears,” she recalls of her reaction to its contents. “It was a complete surprise and a thrilling one.”

While the letter to Bosie is relatively short, it is an important find, as Lord Douglas destroyed much of their correspondence. Written on the stationery of the Albemarle Club, it expresses Wilde’s yearning to be together: “I should awfully like to go away with you somewhere—where it is hot and coloured…” In addition to nine manuscripts of poetry and prose, the album contains letters to three other individuals, including one to a young admirer, Bernulf Clegg, in which Wilde sums up his conviction that works of art should exist for their own sake: “A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it.”

In the facsimile edition, these documents are reproduced on papers that match the originals to an astonishing degree, down to the embossing on Wilde’s personal stationery. Boxed and bound in Tyrian purple (Wilde’s choice for the first edition of his play Salomé), the book also contains an introduction and commentaries written by Holland. He incorporated rare archival photos and documents, including a portrait of the writer with his lover, taken in Oxford in 1893. Designed by Marcus Ratliff, an art director who lives in Vermont, the book was issued in an edition of 525 by famed Veronese printer Stamperia Valdonega, with a binding crafted by Legatoria Rigoldi in Milan. A Portrait of Oscar Wilde, as the book is titled, is an example of a nearly lost tradition. “This is the sort of thing very posh people in England used to do in the Twenties,” says Holland. “Wealthy collectors would produce these facsimile editions to share with their friends.”

While there is no doubt that this was a costly undertaking (“Lúcia wanted something, with no expense spared,” Holland attests), it is anything but flashy. “In today’s world, people tend to want to make more noise with their money,” he adds. “But this is a very quiet, elegant way of showing affection for one’s friends. It will give them a great deal of pleasure for a long time.”

In her final years, Moreira Salles became increasingly reclusive, avoiding the press and rarely attending social events. But attention will no doubt come to her posthumously this fall, when portions of her estate are auctioned off at Sotheby’s in New York.

As her health worsened last year, Moreira Salles spent several months at New York Presbyterian Hospital. The Wilde project, says Holland, seemed to lend her strength. Five hundred twenty-five loose pages, one destined for each book, were shipped to New York, where Moreira Salles and Holland signed them and then decided upon their recipients. Moreira Salles’s list also includes Deeda Blair, Marisa Berenson, Lee Radziwill, Susan Gutfreund and Gwyneth Paltrow (whom she met through Valentino). She asked Holland to send copies to any institution or scholar he thought should have one.

In December, as Moreira Salles lay in the hospital in São Paulo, Queiroz wanted to make sure she had a chance to see the fruits of her work. Stamperia Valdonega agreed to have two copies of A Portrait of Oscar Wilde bound by hand and couriered to Brazil. Just days before his dear friend’s death, Queiroz presented her with copy No. 1 in her hospital room. “We went through it page by page,” he says. “It was a very emotional moment. It was really her creation.”

IV. on the Curriculum : Teaching Wilde, Æstheticism and Decadence.

We are always anxious to publicise the teaching of Wilde at both second and third level, and welcome news of Wilde on curricula.  Similarly, news of the other subjects on whom we are publishing (Whistler, Shaw, Ruskin, George Moore and Vernon Lee) is also welcome. Andrew Eastham is developing a study of the teaching of Wilde, which we hope will be helpful to others who have Wilde on their courses. Andrew Eastham presented his introductory declaration in our July/August issue . To participate in this, contact THE OSCHOLARS at oscholars@gmail.com or Andrew Eastham at @.

V. THE CRITIC AS CRITIC

This issue’s review section contains reviews by Tiffany Perala on The Importance of being Earnest in Portland, Annabel Rutherford on Rhonda Garelick on Loïe Fuller, Pilvi Rajamäe on Kate Macdonald on John Buchan, Luca Caddia on Daniel Novak on Victorian Photography & Fiction, Phillippa Bennett on Tom Pinckney on William Morris, Ruth Kinna on H. Gustav Klaus and Stephen Knight on anarchism, Richard Nate on David Stack on Socialism and Darwinism.

These can be seen by clicking .

Last issue’s review section contained reviews by Saralinda Abitbol on Corin Redgrave’s De Profundis, Andrew Eastham on Philip E. Smith’s Approaches to Teaching Wilde, Tine Englebert on Salomé in Geneva, Bruce Bashford on Michael Robertson on Walt Whitman, Regenia Gagnier on Sheila Rowbotham on Edward Carpenter, Melissa Knox on Esther Rashkin on Unspeakable Secrets, John S. Partington on Deborah Mutch on English Socialist Periodicals, 1880-1900 and Annabel Rutherford on Catherine Maxwell on the Victorian Visionary Imagination.

These can be seen by clicking .

Clicking   will take you to Tables of Contents for all our reviews, which we update in June and December.  We welcome offers to review from readers.

VI. OSCAR WILDE AND THE KINEMATOGRAPH

There still does not seem to be a release date for Al Pacino’s long-awaited Salomaybe. Al Pahaps? The cast is as follows: Al Pacino, Serdar Kalsin (himself/Herod), Kevin Anderson (himself/Jokanaan), Jessica Chastain, Estelle Parson (Salomé), Roxanne Hart (Herodias), Philipp Rhys (the young Syrian), Jack Huston (Lord Alfred), Richard Cox (Robert Ross)…

There have been previews of Oliver Parker’s Dorian Gray, with Ben Barnes (Dorian), Colin Firth (Lord Harry), Rebecca Hall (Sibyl Vane), Ben Chaplin and Rachel Hurd.

A third Wilde film in the making is A Woman of No Importance directed by Bruce Beresford, with Sienna Miller, Sean Bean, Annette Bening.

Posters

This month’s posters were found for us by Danielle Guérin.  After appearing here, these are posted on their own page, called POSTERWALL, gradually building up a gallery that will make the images more accessible than by searching the Internet.  It was updated in March 2009, and can be found by clicking the icon.

Left : A version of ‘Lord Arthur Savile's Crime’ formed the central film of a loosely linked trilogy. Right: A silent Swedish version, now thought to be lost.

VII. LETTERS FROM OUR EDITORS

LETTER FROM BELGIUM

Koenraad Claes

Unfortunately, I once again have nothing to report on Wilde himself. We however have had two interesting exhibitions recently, and can rejoice in scholarly attention for our theatrical heritage from our neighbours across the Channel.

As all European Oscholars should have noticed, the Czech Republic is currently sharing with all of us some of its abundant cultural treasures. One of the most enticing Belgian events held in honour of the Czech EU presidency is no doubt the two-part exhibition Decadence – Czech Lands 1880-1914, running until 10 May. Its interesting collection of some 300 works is divided between the museum area of the Brussels town hall and the Félicien Rops Museum of Namur. Perhaps in keep with the predilections of the museum’s namesake, the Namur part is subtitled ‘Femmes Fatales’, whereas the Brussels part focuses on ‘Fin-de-siècle Unease’. I have yet to visit the Rops Museum, but did already enjoy the modest but captivating Brussels branch of this exhibition. If this selection is at all representative for Czech art of this period, the Bohemian artists strove (even) more consistently than their colleagues in other countries for a deeply oppressive atmosphere. The curators have opted for a thematical over a linear-historical approach, and have distinguished four modes of fin-de-siècle dejection.

Karel Hlaváček predominates in the wing styled ‘Sullen, Debauched and Morose’, where we find inspirations such as the Passion and the Wandering Jew, and also portraits of influential literary figures like Poe, Verlaine and Verhaeren. The ‘Demon of Love’ section contains some variations on the commonplace of the dangerous woman, and ‘Satanic Hallucinations’ harbours frightening visions of golems, lizard-like Slavic vampires and emaciated spirits, mostly by Jaroslav Panuška. In this latter wing we also find a few interesting paintings deviating from the predominantly Symbolist line of the exhibition, showing some gloomy Impressionist landscapes, whereto a mandatory gothic element was often added in the form of picturesque ruins. Half of the exhibition is reserved for the fourth and largest section, ‘Purgatory of Death’, where we find works representing mortality as an omnipresent lurking doom. The typical skeletal grim reapers abound, but there are also disconcerting depictions of the Plague as a divine punishment for moral decadence, and some hints at social ills such as impoverished farmers and labourers. The majority of the exhibited pieces are paintings, but there are also some lithographs and bronze sculptures. Interestingly, even a few books are exhibited, which display typical 1890s tendencies and closely resemble what designers like Ricketts and Beardsley were at the time doing in Britain.

Those interested in such artistic book design will be pleased to hear that the Design Museum of Ghent has opened a temporary exhibition on the work of Henry van de Velde for the book and periodical trade, which runs until June 1st. Book Design between Art Nouveau and New Objectivity explores the evolution in the design aesthetics of van de Velde from the early 1890s, when he discarded painting in favour of applied art, to his final output of the 1940s. The featured publications all come from a private collection which I hear is to be auctioned later this year. The earliest work of van de Velde starts with his decorations for Elskamp’s poetry collection Dominical (1892), and shows sparse wave motifs. These will later on change to more crowded figurative ornaments in the style of continental Art Nouveau, only to revert to the earlier ‘power of expression of the line’ near the end of the decade. Here, once again, one is struck by the similarities with what was happening in Britain. For instance, for the German periodical Dekorative Kunst he chose boards and frames that recall those of the Yellow Book. His book designs are now close to those of renowned firms such as the Vale Press and other such ‘post- Arts & Crafts’ ventures. Like these, he considers books to be ‘monuments of the mind’: their carefully chosen lay-out would introduce an additional sense of aesthetic refinement into our daily lives.

Van de Velde’s fame is at its peak when he moves to Germany in the early twentieth century, and his newly incorporated enthusiasm for the angular shapes of both industrial shapes and classical Doric columns proves highly influential. Through his professional association with Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, and the staunch defence of a Nietzsche-inspired art theory in his writings, van de Velde acquires the reputation of the philosopher’s artistic successor. From now on he considers all skilful publications as Total Works of Art, and wants full control of not only the ornaments, but also of the choice of format, printing materials and fonts. A famous result of this is his magnificent Nietzsche editions. We also get prime examples of his work for important titles of Rilke and Hofmannsthal. These often have modest ornaments based on lines and planes, and the occasional web motif. His amply represented final works show him more than up to the challenge of high Modernism, and will appeal to admirers of the minimalism and experimental typography typical of this period.

A few weeks ago, on 20 March, The European Theatre Research Network, based at the University of Kent (Canterbury), hosted a seminar on Belgian Avant garde Theatre in the early 20^th century. Three specialists talked about different aspects of ‘the First Flemish Wave’, though related topics were addressed as well. I did not take part myself, but have found a most reliable source in my colleague Evelien Jonckheere, who is a second-year RA here at Ghent University working on music hall theatre.

Ms. Jonckheere presented a paper entitled ‘The re-enactment of the Other in early-20th-century variety theatre in Ghent’, in which she talked about how a ‘specific and stereotypical’ view of the world was presented in a 1906 staging of Jules Verne’s classic Around the World in 80 Days as a dazzling variety spectacle. This paper, which will probably be published quite soon, was partly meant as a contextualisation of the Flemish theatrical scene at the time, to show that there was more around than just the famous avant-garde drama that we still know and celebrate today.

The second speaker, Prof. Christel Stalpaert (also Ghent University), did address the avant-garde more directly. She compared different stagings of Maeterlinck plays, and deducted from this the very particular performance aesthetic the master himself intended for these often highly symbolic texts. She then linked these insights to his theoretical essay ‘The Tragic in Daily Life’, and to his well-known statements about his actors having to resemble ‘marionettes’.

Prof. David Willinger (CUNY) then showed how such aesthetic issues could be points of strong contention. When George Norge’s now forgotten play Tam-Tam (1926) opened in Brussels, a group of militant Surrealists used their trademark ‘parodistic and performative devices’ to ruin the premiere. He uses the incident as an example of how ‘personal jealousies and seeming philosophical distinctions can lead to armed combat; an example of how the para-theatrical can eclipse the theatrical’. Prof. Willinger has in fact also translated this obscure text, although it was never even published in the original French.

· Tine Englebert adds that Wilde featured on the cover of the May number of the Belgian magazine Eos, a magazine about science and technology: www.eos.be. The title on the cover was ‘The rise of the modern homosexual’

LETTER FROM FINLAND

Anna Orhanen

Greetings from the home of Jean Sibelius, Helen Schjerfbeck and Albert Edelfelt to all of the Oscholars! I am delighted to communicate to you, for the first time, news on Oscar Wilde and related matters from Finland.

The fin de siècle era has a special place in the hearts of Finns, as it marks the Golden Age of Finnish art. The emotional bonding of the nation towards the art of this era is particularly strong, since artists and their works played an eminent role in enhancing the unity of the nation in the processes leading to Finland’s independence in December 1917. It is partly the national-romantic devotion of the Finnish fin de siècle artists that has insured the visibility of their works in Finland until this day. These works still attract wide audiences; for example, an exhibition of works by Edelfelt in Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki in 2004-2005 was the most popular one in the museum’s history. Within the last couple of decades, Finnish fin de siècle art has become more and more esteemed also elsewhere in the world; works by Schjerfbeck, Akseli Gallen-Kallela and Hugo Simberg, have fetched high prices in the international market, for example at Sotheby’s in London, and the music of Sibelius is performed regularly at the concert halls around the world.

However, it is not merely the Finnish artists of the era who remain well-liked in Finland: Oscar Wilde has enjoyed much popularity amongst the Finnish theatregoers and readers for the past century. Furthermore, in the past decade, there has been a positive outburst of translations of Wilde’s works into Finnish. These include De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol (by Juhani Lindholm and Yrjö Jylhä, 1997); Wilde’s essays ‘The Decay of Lying’ (by Martti Anhava, 1998) and ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism’ (by Asmo Koste, 2001); as well as two collections of Wilde’s critical writings, ‘Aristotle at Afternoon Tea and other writings’ and ‘The Truth of Masks and Other Essays’ (by Timo Hännikäinen, 2006 and 2008). Also Wilde’s fairy-tales were rendered into Finnish in 2006, when The Happy Prince and Other Tales was translated by Jaana Kapari-Jatta. The most recent translation of Wilde came out in April 2009, offering a new version – already the fourth one – of The Picture of Dorian Gray (also by Kapari-Jatta) for Finnish readers.

Also Wilde’s plays and dramatizations of his other works are frequently on stage in Finland. The Importance of Being Earnest has been played in Finland in various different theatres under various different titles, most recently in 2007-2008 in Lilla Teatern in Helsinki, with performances in both official languages, Finnish and Swedish. Wilde’s works have also been popular among marionette artists in Finland: in May 2009, The Picture of Dorian Gray was set into marionette show for adults by a group of puppeteers called the HOX Company in Turku. A dramatization of The Happy Prince has also been set on the stage of the Alexander Theatre in Helsinki in 2008, and the play will have its premier in Joensuu in September 2009.

The reasons behind the recent promotion of Wilde works, both on stage as well as in the form of new translations of Wilde’s famous and first-time translations of Wilde’s less well-known works into Finnish, have not yet been thoroughly examined. Considering the notoriety of Wilde, the amount of research done explicitly on Wilde is still relatively modest in Finland; however, his œuvre remains a popular subject for MA theses – those of literary, linguistic and even philosophical topics. This, as well as well as the recent translations on Wilde’s articles and essays, suggest that there is an increasing interest also towards Wilde’s criticism in Finland.

The translator of the collections ‘Aristotle at Afternoon Tea and Other Writings’ and ‘The Truth of Masks’, Timo Hännikäinen – also a poet, literary critic and editor of cultural journal Kerberos – comments on the process of translating Wilde’s criticism into Finnish: “I have translated two collections of critical writings by Wilde. ‘Aristotle at Afternoon Tea’ (2006) comprises a miscellany of Wilde’s articles and mini-essays. As Wilde produced such a huge amount of articles during his career, many of which contain similar stylistic features as Wilde better known works, I thought it was apposite to make this side of Wilde’s production available for the Finnish audience.”

The other collection translated by Hännikäinen, named after ‘The Truth of Masks’ (2008), is the first version of all Wilde’s main critical essays in Finnish in the same volume. “There were previous translations of ‘The Decay of Lying’ and ‘The Soul of Man under Socialism’ (by Anhava and Koste), but I was never completely happy with those, so I provided new translations of them also”, says Hännikäinen. “In general, I did not find the task of translating Wilde hard or exhausting. The most challenging aspect of translating his text into Finnish was to find suitable expressions to communicate the simultaneous classical clarity and multifariousness of Wilde’s long and refined sentences.”

As regards the reasons behind the increased popularity of Wilde in Finland, Hännikäinen notes: “Some critics have talked about a boom in Wilde translations, and there might be some true to it, as Kapari-Jatta’s translations of Wilde’s fairytales and The Picture of Dorian Gray came out more or less concurrently with mine. Wilde is one of those writers who always find their audience, but this ‘boom’ might also have to do with recently evoked fascination towards the romantic and symbolist literature of fin de siècle in general; also works by other writers of the era, such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, have been translated into Finnish lately. The theoretical contribution of the representatives of symbolism, decadence and l’art pour l’art movement has become an increasingly pertinent topic in today’s critical discourse, which naturally attracts attention to these writers.” Thus, it would seem that the combination of general interest towards fin de siècle era and the way the Finnish audience continues to embrace Wilde’s works leaves an ample space for Wilde studies to develop in Finland.

As for general fin de siècle interest, one cultural highlight of the Finnish summer this year is the exhibition Albert Edelfelt – the Nordic Summer (until 30 August 2009) in art gallery Retretti in Tampere. The exhibition comprises 100 works by Nordic fin de siècle painters, of which 70 works by Edelfelt (1854-1905). The curator of the exhibition is art-historian Maria Vainio Kuortakko.

A propos, the Nordic summer – as you know, it is short, and this tends to keep the Finns outdoors and at their summer cottages as much as possible while the sunshine lasts, so even scholars are hard to reach via e-mail or phone. This is one of the reasons why I do not have much news on the research front this time. However, I look forward to conveying more of those in my letters to come! I wish you all a pleasant rest of the summer and inspiring beginning of the new academic year!

Links: http://www.retretti.fi ; http://www.ateneum.fi

LETTER FROM GERMANY

Lucia Krämer

The past months since my last “Letter from Germany” in January 2009 have been rather slow concerning publications and stage productions relating to the fin de siècle. So I’m afraid that this will be a comparatively short report. As usual, I will subdivide my information according to medium (books, theatre) and provide a mixture of data and explanation/ contextualisation.

Books/Audiobooks

Once again, Wilde has been the most prominent of the British/Irish fin-de-siècle authors on the German book market. The editions from the past three months constitute an interesting yet representative mix, since they focus on different aspects of Wilde’s reputation. On the one hand, there have been three new editions of The Picture of Dorian Gray since the end of January, which underline his reception as a key novelist of Gothic literature. In particular the audioplay version of the novel released by Maritim Verlagsgruppe as the sixth instalment in a series called “Meister des Schreckens” [Masters of Horror] pursues this strategy. Previous instalments in the series included The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Frankenstein, as well as stories by Poe and E.T.A Hoffmann. On the other hand, Diogenes has published yet another collection of aphorisms and epigrams by Wilde entitled Denken mit Oscar Wilde [Thinking with Oscar Wilde], which focuses on Wilde’s reputation as a thinker and purports to admit the reader access to Wilde’s life philosophy.

After several months without any new publications to his name, a new edition of a work by George Bernard Shaw has found its way onto the German book market in the shape of the 12th edition by the publishers Suhrkamp of Ein Wagner-Brevier: Kommentar zum Ring des Nibelungen [The Perfect Wagnerite: Commentary on the Ring]. It is telling that the only original work by Shaw to have found a new German edition in a long time is his essay about Richard Wagner, while his dramatic and narrative work has been languishing.

In the field of secondary literature, I have been able to discover one new publication on Stevenson, whose author tries to unravel the secrets and legends of treasures surrounding the alleged model for Stevenson’s Treasure Island:

Knobloch, Ina. Das Geheimnis der Schatzinsel: Robert Louis Stevenson und die Kokosinsel – einem Mythos auf der Spur [The Mystery of the Treasure Island: RLS and the Coconut Island – Tracing a Myth]. Hamburg: Mare Buchverlag, 2009.

Beyond that, the most interesting new publication on fin-de-siècle literature is dedicated to Joris-Karl Huysmans and the development of Modernism:

Baethge, Constanze. Subversion und Implosion: Die andere Moderne des Joris-Karl Huysmans [Subversion and Implosion: Joris-Karl Huysmans’ other Modernism]. Tübingen: Narr, 2009.

Baethge uses formerly unpublished texts and letters between Huysmans and naturalist and symbolist writers (e.g. Zola, Remy de Gourmont) and their publishers in order to represent the subversive aspects and the history of literary modernism not only from a poetological point of view, but also from a point of view of social history.

Theatre

In German theatres, the past three months have been very slow concerning new productions of Wilde. There has been only one new production of Earnest as burlesque by the Badische Landesbühne, which premiered on 9 April and which will be touring Baden throughout May. The details of this production are as follows:

Bunbury

Die Badische Landesbühne: Directed by Wolf E. Rahlfs; Costumes: Franziska Smolarek

With Tobias Gondolf (Jack Worthing), Miriam Gronau (Gwendolen Fairfax), Helge Gutbrod (Algernon Moncrieff), Cornelia Heilmann (Lady Bracknell), Hannes Höchsmann (Lane), René Laier (Pastor Chasuble), Beate Metz (Cecily Cardew), Anke Siefken (Miss Prism)

The same company is also playing an adaptation of Stevenson’s Treasure Island for children and young spectators, which premiered on 25 April and will be performing in various cities until the end of July (dir. Luisa Brandsdörfer; set: Ines Unser; costumes: Kerstin Ölker). A potentially more interesting project, a production of a Salomé adaptation by Einar Schleef at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin (dir. Vera Nemirova), which should have premiered on 18 February, did unfortunately not materialise. It was abandoned due to artistic differences.

Yet Salome was present on German stages in Strauss’ operatic version, with repertory performances for example at the Deutsche Oper Berlin; with a revival in March and April of a 2004 production of the piece in Cologne; and with one new production in Lübeck. The Lübeck production garnered unanimous praise for Manuela Uhl in the title role, yet there were mixed reactions to the work of Roman Brogli-Sacher, who took on the double role of director and musical director. While his musical interpretation of Strauss’ work was widely lauded, his directorial concept met with mixed reviews. The production opened on 2 February and will be performed until 18 June 2009.

While the Cologne production, directed by respected German actress Katharina Thalbach, received mixed reviews when it was first produced in 2004, its revival has been widely praised. Like Manuela Uhl in the Lübeck production, Catherine Naglestad in the title role was singled out for particular praise by the reviewers, who now also seemed reconciled to Thalbach’s modernizing re-interpretation of the Salomé story. Here are the details for the two productions:

Salome

Theater Lübeck: Direction/Musical Direction: Roman Brogli-Sacher; Production Design: Ulrike Radichevich; Choreography: Martina Wüst

Cast:

Herodes:

Matthias Grätzel, John Pickering

Herodias:

Roswitha C. Müller

Salome:

Manuela Uhl, Michaela Lucas

Jochanaan:

Antonio Yang

Narraboth:

Daniel Szeili

Ein Page:

Wioletta Hebrowska, Sandra Maxheimer

Salome

Bühnen Köln: Musical Direction: Enrico Dovico / Markus Stenz; Direction: Katharina Thalbach; Set: Momme Röhrbein; Costumes: Angelika Rieck; Lighting: Dirk Sarach-Craig.

Cast:

Herodes

Alexander Fedin

Herodias

Dalia Schaechter / Renate Behle

Salome

Catherine Naglestad

Jochanaan

Samuel Youn / Thomas J. Mayer

Narraboth

Ray M. Wade jr

Ein Page

Adriana Bastidas Gamboa

Apart from that, the presence of the fin de siècle on German stages was limited over the last three months. Ibsen retains his outstanding position, with eight new productions of four of his plays (three productions of An Enemy of the People alone) since the end of January. This compares with new productions of two plays by Wedekind, one by Strindberg, and one by Hauptmann. It will be interesting to observe whether the abandoned Berlin production of Wilde’s Salome play will be realised at the Maxim Gorki Theater during the upcoming theatrical season of 2009/10. I hope that I will be able to send you some information on that already in my next letter.

LETTER FROM IRELAND

Aoife Leahy

The Dublin Gay Theatre Festival was back, after an opening night launch at The Front Lounge pub on the 30th of April. Plays ran from the 4th of May to the 17th of May, and last year’s very popular illustration of Wilde with a green carnation in his mouth was again prominent on the festival’s website and promotional material. The festival’s artistic director Brian Merriman remarked last year that using Wilde’s immediately recognisable image had greatly helped in advertising the festival. Appropriately, Wilde’s life and work are very well represented on the 2009 programme. The full programme of events is on view at http://www.gaytheatre.ie/

During the first week, Leslie Clack’s one-man play More Lives Than One - Oscar Wilde and the Black Douglas was on at The Cobalt Café, North Great George’s St, from the 4th to the 9th every evening at 8pm. I was very sorry to miss a short run of the play at 90 Merrion Square last October (privately arranged by the Friends of the National Gallery), but the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival has saved the day! Leslie Clack narrates the story and plays Wilde’s characters Dorian Gray, Salomé, Lady Bracknell and Herod as well as real life figures such as Edward Carson. He kindly spoke to me on the phone before leaving for Dublin and explained that there are thirteen distinct characters in all. Les was looking forward to visiting Dublin again and to performing in the lovely drawing room setting of the Cobalt Café. He remarked that it would be a rather different experience to acting in the 700-seat theatre that he played in recently!

Lord Arthur’s Bed performed by the Theatre North company from North Yorkshire should also be of interest to Wildeans, since the play examines personalities from the famous Boulton and Park Case of the early 1870s. Ernest Boulton and Frederick Park were arrested for wearing women’s clothes but were ultimately found not guilty, apparently because they played to the crowd and entertained the jury. Wilde may have borrowed the name of Ernest for his most famous play, The Importance of Being Earnest. In Lord Arthur’s Bed, Ernest/Stella’s unofficial marriage to Lord Arthur Clinton in 1868 is contrasted to the civil partnership of Donald and Jim in 2008. Again, Wilde may have borrowed Lord Arthur’s name for “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime.” This play ran from the 4th to the 9th of May at 8pm, in The New Theatre.

During the second week of the festival, an adaptation of Wilde’s fairytale The Happy Prince was showing at the Outhouse Theatre, 105 Capel St. The adaptation takes on a contemporary context in using props from poverty stricken areas of the world. The play runs at varying times from the 15th of May to the 17th of May. Since there were performances at 6.30pm on the 15th, at 1pm and 3.30pm on the 16th and at 2pm and 4.30pm on the 17th, the play was likely to be aimed at audiences of all ages. The play is performed by five young actors from The Peculius Stage Company, Durham.

An adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray was also showing from the 11th of May to the 16th of May at 8pm every evening in The New Theatre. The play is described as a tale of obsession, extravagance and lust and is performed by the Independent Theatre ensemble, from Indiana, U.S.A. All in all, this is an excellent year for Wilde at the festival.

In other news, Dr Deaglán Ó Donghaile (NUI Maynooth) reports that his research trip to the Clark Library, UCLA, is going very well. He has had the exciting experience of accessing additional material on Wilde in the Clark, which is not listed on the library’s online catalogue.

The Royal Irish Academy’s “Ireland and the Fin De Siècle” conference on the 3rd to the 4th of September includes a specific panel on Oscar Wilde in the provisional programme. Wilde is also very likely to be mentioned to some extent in a range of other papers. More information on our CONFERENCE page.

LETTER FROM SCOTLAND

Emily Alder

Greetings to the Oscholars from Scotland! I am pleased to be able to report on a variety of dramatic, academic, and artistic activities that have recently taken place. If Wildean events themselves have been unusually thin on the ground, the country has certainly seen plentiful activity in the broader fin de siècle context.

Since my last letter in September it has been a relatively quiet time on the stage for Oscar Wilde. In the autumn of 2008, Mark Piper’s revival of Sir Peter Hall’s adaptation of An Ideal Husband toured the UK, including His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen in October and the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh in November. Despite strong individual performances from Isla Carter as Mabel and Carol Royle as Lady Chiltern, for example, the production drew mixed reviews for its ‘creaky’ pace and the veteran age of some of the cast.

While we look forward to the announcement of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe programme in early June and the flourish of Wilde productions that it usually heralds, the spring of 2009 has instead nurtured the work of some of Wilde’s contemporaries. Blackeyed Theatre’s production of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard toured regional theatres in March, including the Macroberts Centre, Stirling, and the Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy. Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic musical satire on aestheticism, Patience, was colourfully presented by the Gilbert and Sullivan Society at Edinburgh’s King’s Theatre in March and kept a group of first year students as well as my colleague and myself well entertained. In May and June, a new version of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt by Colin Teevan will be staged at the Dundee Rep and the Theatre Royal, Glasgow.

In the academic world, the early spring saw several events. The Decadence Reading Group at the University of Edinburgh continued its 2008/09 series with Aubrey Beardsley, The Story of Venus and Tannhauser in February, and in March turned to Charles Bernheimer, Decadent Subjects: the Idea of Decadence in Art, Literature, Philosophy and Culture of the Fin de Siècle in Europe along with a talk by Dr Michael Turnbull on André Raffalovich and John Gray.

At Edinburgh Napier University, a Carnegie Trust grant has enabled work to begin on the production of the Robert Louis Stevenson Website. This online resource will include unique collections of photographs and images never seen publically before, as well as full texts, biographical and bibliographical pages, and resources for school students and young scholars. See www.victorianweb.org/authors/stevenson/rlswebsite.html for full details about the website project, which will be launched in November 2009.

At the University of St. Andrews in March, Dr Shafquat Towheed from the Open University spoke on ‘Vernon Lee’s Scientific Reading and Response: Evidence for Marginalia and Commonplace Books’ as part of the School of English research seminar series. In Aberdeen, the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies held its 9th Irish and Scottish Studies Postgraduate Conference, Cross-currents, in early April, including papers on W. B. Yeats, R. L. Stevenson, and George MacDonald. At the University of Glasgow, meanwhile, a series of events and talks associated with the Whistler exhibition at the Hunterian Art Gallery began in January and continues into May (see www.gla.ac.uk/events/exhibitions).

Readers’ attention is also drawn to forthcoming events: the British Association of Victorian Studies (BAVS) Scottish Seminar on ‘Robert Louis Stevenson in the 21st Century’ at the University of Edinburgh, 23 May, and the 33rd annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures at the University of Glasgow, 27th to 31st July.

VIII. BEING TALKED ABOUT: CONFERENCES & CALLS FOR PAPERS

Here we now only note Calls for Papers or articles specifically relating to Wilde or his immediate circles.  The more general list has its own page, updated every month; to reach it, please click .  We hope these Calls will attract Wildëans.

Ireland and the Fin De Siècle. Conference: Thursday 3rd and Friday 4th September 2009, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin.

Academy House, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2

Thursday 3rd September

4.30pm REGISTRATION

5pm PANEL ONE: GEORGE MOORE

* Dr Julie Anne Stevens (St Patrick's College, Drumcondra): George Moore, Somerville and Ross and the reconstruction of optical experience in late nineteenth-century Irish short fiction

* Dr Mary Pierse (University College Cork): George Moore’s Fin de Siècle: themes and variations

* Dr Eamon Maher (Institute of Technology, Tallaght): George Moore and the Catholic novel

6.30pm KEYNOTE LECTURE :

Dr Eibhear Walshe (University College Cork): MacLiammóir: the last Wildean decadent

7.30pm WINE RECEPTION

Friday 4th September

9am REGISTRATION

9.30am PANEL TWO: OSCAR WILDE

* Dr Noreen Doody (St Patrick's College, Drumcondra): Oscar Wilde: Salomé and Smith O’Brien

* Dr Deaglán Ó Donghaile (NUI Maynooth): Oscar Wilde and the radical politics of the Fin de Siècle

* Dr Sondeep Kandola (University of Leeds): ‘The same flesh and blood as one’s self! Oh, I hope not!’: representations of Fin de Siècle Ireland in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray

10.30am Break

10.45am PANEL THREE: THE NEW WOMAN

* Dr Kalene Nix (University College Cork): Katherine Cecil Thurston

* Professor James H. Murphy (DePaul University, Chicago): Grand’s Ideala (1888) and Lawless’s Grania (1892) and the structure of experience in new-woman fiction

11.45am Break

12 noon PANEL FOUR: GEORGE EGERTON

* Dr Heather Ingman (Trinity College Dublin): George Egerton and the Irish short story

* Dr Tina O’Toole (University of Limerick): Ireland and the Fin de Siècle

* Whitney Standlee (University of Liverpool): Forging the uncreated conscience of her sex: decadence, New Womanhood and the escape from Ireland in George Egerton’s The Wheel of God (1898)

* Dr Maureen O’Connor (Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick): The yellow aster and the green carnation: decadent nature in Irish new woman fiction

1pm Lunch [Not Included]

2pm KEYNOTE LECTURE

Dr Nicola Gordon Bowe (National College of Art and Design): Myths, dreams or unearthed truths? Symbolist imagery in the arts of Fin de Siècle Ireland

3pm Break

3.30pm PANEL FIVE: THE FIN DE SIÈCLE AND CULTURAL REPRESENTATION

* Dr Brian Ó Conchubhair (University of Notre Dame): Vernacular and dialectical languages in the European and Irish Fin de Siècle

* Dr Aoife Leahy (Dublin Institute of Technology): Harry Furniss and the art of the Fin de Siècle caricature

* Professor Alex Davis (University College Cork): Learning to be brutal: Synge, linguistics, decadence

* Dr Leon Litvack (Queen’s University Belfast): Posing for posterity: the Irish photographic portrait at the Fin de Siècle

To register, please visit www.ria.ie/committees/irishliteratures/new.html

For further information please call 01 6762570

‘British Æstheticisms’ are the subject of a conference being organised by Bénédicte Coste and Catherine Delyfer at the University of Montpellier in October 2009. The programme is now on line: see www.esthetismes.com. This offers a wonderful chance for planning future developments at a gathering of some forty fin-de-siéclistes in the celebrated university town in the south of France.

The Société Française d’Etudes Victoriennes et Edouardiennes (http://www.sfeve.paris4.sorbonne.fr/) is inviting contributions for issue number 72 (October 2010) of its journal Les Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens (http://www.cervec.org/) devoted to the Theatre of Oscar Wilde, edited by Marianne Drugeon, @. The Call for Papers closed on 30th March. Again, more information will be published by us when we have it.

IX.  OSCAR IN POPULAR CULTURE / WILDE AS UNPOPULAR CULTURE

Two pictures of the Oscar Wilde Chair by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac photographed by Tine Englebert in Desforges Décoration, Place du Bourg-de-Four, Geneva last February.

Alcohol taken in sufficient quantities (4):

We reported in an earlier issue of the Oscar Wilde Irish pub in Tartu, Estonia, outside of which was a statue of Oscar Wilde in conversation with the Estonian writer Edouard Wilde. Now Pilvi Rajmaë tell us that ‘the Wilde Pub is no more. Once its Irish owner decided to expand into the fatal real estate business and sold it, it had been going steadily downhill (a heart-wrenching spectacle it was!) and finally went bankrupt two months ago. It had lost its Irish aura completely by then and the new owner wants to change both the name and content. His taste runs heavily into German beer houses and he has already killed several formerly well-loved places by turning them into uniform drinking holes. I love Bavaria and would not mind a beer myself, but with him it's a travesty. The statue is still there and there has been a public outcry against his plans but money talks and anyway, the bookshop which lent the place its special magic has closed for good.’

X. OSCAR WILDE: THE poetic legacy

We were very pleased indeed to receive the following letter, which we reproduce with kind permission:

I liked your comments on The Ballad of William Bloat in your issue 42, which I have only just found. You are correct that the Ballad is still in copyright. I am the copyright holder, as the son and representative of the late Raymond Calvert, who composed the Ballad in 1926, and I like to give permission for the Ballad to be reproduced, free of charge for non-profitmaking ventures, and will be glad to do so in your case.

However I do insist on the correct version of the Ballad being used and I regret to say that the version you have is not only wrong in many places but would have annoyed my father very much because (like most versions) it assumes a conflict between Dublin and Belfast which he did not feel. I am therefore attaching a photocopy of the only definitive version published in my father's lifetime and would be grateful if you will substitute it for the version you currently have. You may however alter it by spelling out the words ‘bloody’ and ‘hell’ in full, as he would have wished. I fear that Northern Ireland in 1950 found them too shocking to contemplate.

Best wishes,
Peter Calvert

XI. Web Foot Notes

A look at websites of possible interest.  Contributions welcome here as elsewhere.

All the material that we had thus far published in the ‘Web Foot Notes’ was brought together in June 2003 in one list called ‘Trafficking for Strange Webs’.  New websites continue to be reviewed here from time to time, after which they are filed on the Trafficking for Strange Webs page, which was last updated in May 2008: a new update is in the course of preparation and has been partially completed. A Table of Contents has been added for ease of access. ‘Trafficking for Strange Webs’ surveys 48 websites devoted to Oscar Wilde. The Société Oscar Wilde is also publishing on its webpages two lists (‘Liens’ and ‘Liaisons’) of recommendations.  To see ‘Liens’, click here. To see ‘Liaisons’, click here.

To see ‘Trafficking for Strange Webs’, click  .

XII. OGRAPHIES

We continue to expand our sections of BIBLIOGRAPHIES, DISCOGRAPHIES and SCENOGRAPHIES and this is now a major component of our work. Click the appropriate icons. Updates are announced regularly on our forum.

NEWS FROM THE Royal Historical Society Bibliography, Irish History Online AND London's Past Online:

The way in which the RHS Bibliography and London's Past Online are published will change from 1st January 2010. The new service, under a new name - Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) - will be a partnership between the Royal Historical Society, the Institute of Historical Research and Brepols Publishers. The existing editorial team, with its close links to academic historians, will continue to be involved. Our aim is to maintain and to improve upon the standards and facilities of the current Bibliography, and of course to keep the Bibliography up-to-date by adding information about new publications, which currently entails adding well over 10,000 records each year.

As a result of these changes, the service will no longer be available free of charge, but the RHS and the IHR have concluded that this is the only way to secure the updating and improvement of the database in the long term, and thus to ensure the on-going usefulness of the work that has so far been funded by several charities (including the Leverhulme Trust and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), and by the United Kingdom Arts and Humanities Research Council. The RHS and IHR will be increasing their financial commitment to the Bibliography in order to keep subscriptions as low as possible.

Our new partners, Brepols (http://www.brepols.net), who publish the International Medieval Bibliography, will also contribute their extensive experience in the online publication of bibliographies and reference works for scholars.

The existing Bibliography website will still be updated in autumn 2009, as usual. BBIH will be available by institutional and individual subscriptions, and we hope that our existing users will be able to use it. You can help by telling your library about the changes and encouraging them to subscribe to BBIH. BBIH will be available for institutional trials from October 2009 and will be launched on 1st January 2010, when the existing Bibliography website will close.

The launch of BBIH will also entail changes to our partner project, Irish History Online. An announcement about this will be made later in the year.

We have prepared answers to some of the questions that we think users are most likely to ask (http://www.history.ac.uk/partners/rhs-bibliography/faq). You can also read the press release from the RHS and the IHR, or see Brepols' leaflet advertising the forthcoming service. We will publish further news on the Bibliography website and through our mailing list as soon as it becomes available. We welcome comments, suggestions and feedback at http://www.rhs.ac.uk/bibl/docs/feedback.html, or by e-mail to simon.baker@sas.ac.uk.

XIII. Mad, Scarlet Music

Our regular feature concerning Wilde-related music covers productions, recordings and reviews of the Wilde operas, cantatas, orchestral suites, musical comedies and ballets, to which we add information about other musical works of Wilde’s period or derived from its literature. From Strauss’ Salome and Zemlinsky’s Florentine Tragedy to Oliver Rudland’s The Nightingale and the Rose and Elizabeth Esris’ and Sergio Cervetti’s Elegy for a Prince, we gather all the materials for a major study of Wilde’s impact on composers. Mad, Scarlet Music is edited by Tine Englebert. For the current edition, click

XIV. NEVER SPEAKING DISRESPECTFULLY: THE OSCAR WILDE SOCIETIES & ASSOCIATIONS

News of the Wilde Societies is published on their own page. We are very pleased that we now carry news of the Oscar Wilde Society of Japan. To reach the page, please click

XV. THE OSCHOLARS COLOUR SUPPLEMENT

Readers of our sister journal RUE DES BEAUX ARTS will be familiar with its long running strip cartoon on Oscar Wilde by Patrick Chambon. In the issue of November 2008 this was joined by a new strip by Dan Pearce, translated into French (as Oscar Wilde: La Resurrection) by Danielle Guérin. With this issue of THE OSCHOLARS we publish the third episode in English (as Oscar Wilde: The Second Coming). Click the illustration to take up the tale:

Pictured: The original door of cell C.3.3, Reading Gaol, now part of the H.M. Prison Service Collection housed at the Galleries of Justice, Nottingham.

Our plan is eventually to bring all three strips into one folder, where they can be read straight through as graphic novels.

For a Bibliography of Wilde in graphic novel form compiled by Danielle Guérin, click here.

XVI. OUR FAMILY OF JOURNALS

All our journals appear on our website www.oscholars.com and can be reached from our hub page at that address. All of them invite submissions. Each has a mailing list for alerts to new issues or special announcements. To be included on the list for any or all of them, contact oscholars@gmail.com.

The Eighth Lamp

The second issue of this journal of Ruskin studies has been published on our website, under the vigorous editorship of Anuradha Chatterjee and Carmen Casaliggi. Dr Chatterjee has produced a splendid new issue, and issued a Call for Papers for the third. THE EIGHTH LAMP: Ruskin Studies To-day will shed much light in new places, and places Ruskin studies firmly in conjugation with Wilde studies.

The Latchkey

The first issue of THE LATCHKEY, a journal devoted to reporting and creating scholarship on The New Woman, was published in the spring of 2009, and a new edition will be ready early his autumn. The co-editors are Jessica Cox, Petra Dierkes-Thrun, Sophie Geoffroy, Kathleen Gledhill, Lisa Hager, Christine Huguet and Claire O’Callaghan.

Melmoth

Edited by Sondeep Kandola, two issues of this appeared within THE OSCHOLARS main editorial section. The third issue will float free and will appear later this summer.

The Michaelian

This is the first journal to be dedicated to Michael Field, marking the growing interest in that remarkable couple and was published in the spring of 2009. The first issue was edited by Sharon Bickle, and the second will be edited by Michelle Lee.

Ravenna

This new journal, intended to appear twice a year, is devoted to the Italian fin-de-siècle and decadenza, with particular emphasis on the British connection. It is edited by Elisa Bizzotto and Luca Caddia, and the first number appeared in March 2009. Articles are accepted in both English and Italian, in the latter case with an English précis.

Rue des Beaux Arts

The twentieth issue of our French language journal under the dedicated editorship of Danielle Guérin was published in May 2009. It continues to reflect and encourage Wilde studies in France and the Francophone countries.

Shavings, Moorings and The Sibyl

New issues of these journals devoted to George Bernard Shaw (co-edited by Barbara Pfeifer), George Moore (now edited by Tiffany Perala vice Mark Llewellyn) and Vernon Lee (edited by Sophie Geoffroy) are published as material is accumulated. We recommend joining their mailing list for alerts. A new issue of The Sibyl was published in February 2009. In December 2008 the transfer was completed of all the early issues of Shavings from our former webpages at www.irishdiaspora.net to www.oscholars.com.

Visions and Nocturne

In the spring of 2008 we gathered together all the visual arts information that was scattered through different section of THE OSCHOLARS into a section called VISIONS. This was consolidated in the summer, and a new edition was published in the autumn followed by a further one in spring 2009. A new issue is expected at the end of August. VISIONS is co-edited by Anne Anderson, Isa Bickman, Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch, Tricia Cusack, Nicola Gauld and Sarah Turner. NOCTURNE, our journal devoted to Whistler and his circle, is now being incorporated into VISIONS.

XVII. Acknowledgments

THE OSCHOLARS website continues to be provided and constructed by Steven Halliwell of The Rivendale Press, a publishing house with a special interest in the fin-de-siècle.  Mr Halliwell joins Dr John Phelps of Goldsmiths College, University of London, and Mr Patrick O’Sullivan of the Irish Diaspora Net as one of the godfathers without whom THE OSCHOLARS could not have appeared on the web in any useful form.

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