Oscar Wilde

Ian Small

Richard Aldington

The Portrait of Mr. W. H.

Josephine Guy

Nineteenth-century Britain saw the rise of secularism, the development of a modern capitalist economy, multi-party democracy, and an explosive growth in technological, scientific and medical knowledge. It also witnessed the emergence of a mass literary culture which changed permanently the relationships between writers, readers and publishers. Focusing on the work of British and Irish authors, The Routledge Concise History of Nineteenth-Century Literature: considers changes in literary forms, styles and genres, as well as in critical discourses examines literary movements such as Romanticism, Pre-Raphaelitism, Aestheticism and Decadence considers the work of a wide range of canonical and non-canonical writers discusses the impact of gender studies, queer theory, postcolonialism and book history contains useful, student-friendly features such as explanatory text boxes, chapter summaries, a detailed glossary and suggestions for further reading. In their lucid and accessible manner, Josephine M. Guy and Ian Small provide readers with an understanding of the complexity and variety of nineteenth-century literary culture, as well as the historical conditions which produced it.

The Routledge Concise History of Nineteenth-Century Literature

Penguin Classics Introduction to The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde (Penguin Classics)

Conditions for Criticism studies changes in the practice of literary criticism in the nineteenth century and locates those changes within wider movements in British intellectual culture. The growth of knowledge and its subsequent institutionalization in universities produced new forms of intellectual authority. This book examines these processes in a wide variety of disciplines, including economics, historiography, sociology, psychology, and philosophical aesthetics, and explores their impact upon literary criticism. Its thesis is that the work of late nineteenth-century writers such as Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde can be best understood in terms of their engagement with, and reaction to, these general intellectual changes, a view which in its turn reveals the seriousness of their work.

Authority, Knowledge, and Literature in the Late Nineteenth Century

Conditions for Criticism

Josephine M. Guy

"Studying Oscar Wilde: History, Criticism, & Myth takes issue with many assumptions current in Wilde scholarship. Professors Guy and Small are interested in the tension between Wilde's enduring popularity with the general reading public as a perennially witty entertainer and his status among academics as a complex, politicized writer attuned to the cultural and philosophical currents associated with modernity. A number of commonly held views are challenged." "To what extent is De Profundis autobiographical? How sophisticated is the learning exhibited in Intentions? In what ways are the society comedies "about" homosexuality?" "The volume also examines some of Wilde's lesser-known, unfinished works and scenarios, including The Cardinal of Avignon, La Sainte Courtisane, and A Florentine Tragedy (all printed as appendices), arguing that these "failed" works provide important insight into the reasons for Wilde's popular success." "Guy and Small have authored numerous articles and books on Wilde. This new book will be a must read for scholars, but it is also written in a jargon-free language that speaks to the wider audience of readers who enjoy Oscar Wilde."--BOOK JACKET.

History, Criticism, and Myth

Studying Oscar Wilde

In this important new book, Guy and Small develop a new account of literary creativity in the late nineteenth century, one that combines concepts generated by text-theorists concerning the embodied nature of textuality with the empirical insights of text-editors and book historians. Through these developments, which the authors term the ‘textual turn,’ this study examines the textual condition of nineteenth-century literature. The authors explore works by Dickens, Wilde, Hardy, Yeats, Swinburne, FitzGerald, Pater, Arnold, Pinero and Shaw, connecting questions about what a work textually ‘is’ with questions about why we read it and how we value it. The study asks whether the textual turn places us in a stronger position to analyze the value of a nineteenth-century text—not for readers of the nineteenth century, but of the twenty-first. The authors argue that this issue of value is central to their discipline.

The Textual Condition of Nineteenth-Century Literature

Professor of English Literature Ian Small

This collection of letters, complete with analysis, reappraises Oscar Wilde, showing him to be a dedicated and professional writer, attentive to dealing with publishers and cultivating reviewers. It highlights recent changes in outlook towards Wilde.

An Essay on New Materials & Methods of Research

Oscar Wilde Revalued

Laurel Brake

Pater in the 1990s

This study of Oscar Wilde updates and reconceptualizes the bibliographic objectives of Oscar Wilde Revalued, and surveys research on Wilde from 1992-2000 in a more explicitly evaluative manner.

Recent Research : a Supplement to "Oscar Wilde Revalued"

Russell Jackson

Joseph Bristow

"The first variorum edition of 'De Profundis' presents its full textual history and an assessment of all extant witnesses to the text."--

The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: De profundis, "Epistola : in carcere et vinculis"

Marcus Walsh

This volume of essays addresses the practical implications of theoretical issues in a variety of texts from Shakespeare to Oscar Wilde.

Ian Small

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