Reading and Writing Skills for
Students of Literature in English: The
Victorian Period
Enric Monforte
Jacqueline Hurtley
Bill Phillips
Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being Earnest
(1895)
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
http://www.commons.wikimedia.org
https://sisenglish.wikispaces.com
Lady Jane Francesca Wilde (Jane
Elgee, 1821-1896)
Speranza
http://www.findagrave.com
William Robert Wilde
http://www.mr-oscar-wilde.de
On 29 May 1884, Wilde
married
Constance Lloyd.
They had two
sons,
Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan
(1886).
The photo shows Wilde’s
wife
and his son Cyril in 1889.
http://www.odysseetheater.com
John Ruskin (1819-1900), by John
Everett Millais
http://www.bestpriceart.com
http://www.gardenvisit.com/assets/madge/ruskin/6
00x/ruskin_600x.jpg
Walter Pater (1839-1894): “Art for art’s
sake”
http://www.nndb.com/people/622/000096334/
Lord Alfred Douglas
http://www.turgingsomedrama.com
Wilde and Douglas at Oxford (1893)
http://evansexperientialism.freewebspace.com/
oscar_wilde.htm
Homosexuality
“I am the love that dare not speak its name”.
Lord Alfred Douglas, “Two Loves” (1894)
The trials of Oscar Wilde (1895)
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/wild
e/images.html
Envelope and note that were basis of libel suit
Poster announcing auction of Wilde’s
possessions
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/proj
ects/ftrials/wilde/images.html
Reading
"In Reading gaol by Reading
town
There is a pit of shame,
And in it lies a wretched man
Eaten by teeth of flame,
In burning winding-sheet he
lies,
And his grave has got no
name."
Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol
(1898)
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
“And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!”
Wilde with Lord Alfred Douglas,
Naples (1897)
Wilde’s works:
• The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)
• The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
• Lord Arthur Saville’s Crime and Other Stories
(1891)
• Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892)
• Salomé (1893)
• A Woman of No Importance (1893)
• An Ideal Husband (1895)
• The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
• The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
• De Profundis (1905)
The Picture
of Dorian Gray
(1890)
Directed by
Albert Lewin
(1945)
http://www.moviemorlocks.com
The Importance of Being Earnest
(1895)
http://www.bl.uk
Manuscript
The Importance of
Being Earnest (1895)
Original production
playbill
http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/58876-large.jpg
The Importance of
Being Earnest at the
St. James’s Theatre
.
http://www.vam.ac.uk
Identity in Victorian
society
http://www.josephhaworth.com
Dandyism
‘Dandy’ according
to OED:
http://cedarlounge.wor
dpress.com
http://www.knowledgerush.com/wiki
_image/e/ec/Dandies.jpg
“One who studies
above everything to
dress elegantly and
fashionably; a
beau, fop,
‘exquisite’”.
Dandyism
The Importance of Being Earnest
(1895)
Bunbury and Victorian
hypocrisy
‘Give
me back my
cigarette case.’
Allan Aynesworth as
Algernon
and George Alexander
as
Jack (1895)
Photograph by Alfred Ellis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_James's_Theatre
The Importance of Being Earnest
(1895)
A middle-class
British
Victorian family
takes
tea
http://www.heardfamilyhistory.org.uk/family%20secrets.htm
The Importance of Being Earnest
(1895)
http://www.lancashiregallery.co.uk/mediac/400_0/
media/DSCF3667.jpg
The city: Central London,
Fleet Street around 1895
The countryside:
Woolton Wood
The Importance of Being Earnest
(1895)
Jennifer Scott-Malden
as Gwendolen Fairfax,
Geoffrey Church as Jack
Worthing and Charles
Edwards as Algernon
Moncrieff, English Touring
Theatre (1995)
http://www.ett.org.uk
The Importance of Being Earnest
(Dir. Oliver Parker, 2002)
Judi Dench as
Lady Bracknell:
impersonating
Victorian society
De Profundis (1905)
‘. . . Suffering is one very long moment. We
cannot divide it by seasons.
We can only record its moods, and chronicle
their return. With us time
itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems
to circle round one centre
of pain.’
Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2197/2224470530_9a886582
81.jpg?v=0
http://www.ovejaselectricas.es/?p=30
A Conversation
with Oscar
Wilde,
London
http://commons.wikimedia.org