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© John Cooper, 2024.
That’s Odd
Tag: #oscarwilde
Oscar Wilde Archive
The Oscar Wilde Blog — Archive
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© John Cooper, 2024.
The Rops Vignette
Not Everyone’s Kettle of Fish
Oscar Wilde’s symbolist play Salome is notable for its licentious artwork by Aubrey Beardsley. But Beardsley’s infamous illustrations appeared only when the English edition of the play was released in 1894.
When the original French Salomé had been published a year earlier, it contained no illustrations pertinent to the text. The only graphical representation in the French edition was the Rops Vignette, which had nothing to do with Wilde’s play, but it rivals Beardsley in its decadence.
So what is the Rops Vignette?
Continue reading “The Rops Vignette”Numa Patlagean
Clay bust of Oscar Wilde, 1914. Numa Patlagean (1888—1961).
Oscar Wilde’s modeling career has been under discussion recently.
I refer, of course, to the art of sculpture, a subject that held a fascination for Oscar: he referenced it in his essays on art, and in his reviews of art galleries; he bought sculptures, commission sculptures, and even had his hair styled after a bust of Nero in the Louvre.
Oscar used say that he could only think in stories and correspondingly asserted that a sculptor thinks only in the raw material of his art. He told André Gide, “the sculptor doesn’t try to translate his thought into marble; he thinks in marble, directly”. 1 This thought echoes the symbolism of Oscar’s table talk about a man who thought only in bronze melting down the statue of eternal sadness that adorned his wife’s grave, and making of it a bronze homage to the joy which dwells only in the moment.
Continue reading “Numa Patlagean”Some Common Prisoner
Oscar Wilde Visits Two U.S. Prisons
—Updated from its original posting in 2015—
State penitentiaries are not generally considered tourist destinations.
Yet in a curious twist in Oscar Wilde’s conventional social activity during his lecture tour of North America in 1882, he took the opportunity to visit TWO American state prisons within the space of three days: one during a train stop on his way to lecture in Atchison, KS; and a second (along with its insane asylum) before his next evening lecture in Lincoln, NE.
Did Wilde have a special interest in places of incarceration? Or, aware of his appeal to notoriety, was fate prefiguring for him a life on the inside?
Continue reading “Some Common Prisoner”Oscar’s Oyster Supper
Tea or Coffee, Mr Wilde?
(Give Me The Wine List)
Eating oysters in Connecticut is a big thing; and when in Hartford, CT, there was only one place to go: Honiss’ Oyster House.
In 1981 the New York Times ran an article about the famous old place, now long since gone:
Continue reading “Oscar’s Oyster Supper”Rosebud
Gyles Brandreth’s
Podcast Episode with Rupert Everett
A podcast worth noting for Wildeans is Rosebud—a series of interviews conducted by the estimable Gyles Brandreth. Notable not because Gyles is now a podcaster—surely a part preordained for a journalist, novelist, non-fiction writer, publisher, television presenter, after-dinner speaker, theatre producer, university chancellor, former politician, and perennial novelty knitwear model.
No—it is more pertinently notable because Gyles is also the Honorary President of the Oscar Wilde Society. And it’s more recently notable because on March 21, 2024 his guest on the podcast was Rupert Everett, an actor who also has strong connections to Oscar Wilde.
Continue reading “Rosebud”Gossip II
The Oscar Wilde World of Gossip (American Edition)
by Neil Titley
(Dan Shepelavy, Vanessa Heron, Editors)
Universal Exports of North America. (Philadelphia), 2023.
In case it was missing.
Here is the link to the original blog post.
[To be consumed only with yellow food.]
© John Cooper, 2023.
Gossip
The Oscar Wilde World of Gossip (American Edition)
by Neil Titley
(Dan Shepelavy, Vanessa Heron, Editors)
Universal Exports of North America. (Philadelphia), 2023.
ORDER ONLY FROM THE PUBLISHER’S WEBSITE
If you are about to start reading hundreds of biographies, memoirs, and diaries in search of informative or amusing (and preferably salacious) anecdotes about the Victorians in general, and Oscar Wilde in particular, then Stop!—you don’t have to. Neil Titley has done that for you.
Continue reading “Gossip”The Spectator
Max Beerbohm
Having begun a personal resurgence of interest in Max Beerbohm (exhibition, article) it would be remiss not to also allude to the special role he had with regard to Oscar Wilde.
Max Beerbohm first met Oscar in 1888 while a student at Charterhouse School, but it was not a moment likely to engender an immediate affinity. For Max it was just a brief introduction. And, as for Oscar, he was a decade removed from the callow superficiality of college days and currently set to decamp to the decayed remove of serious Bunburying.
Continue reading “The Spectator”
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