Edited by Joseph Bristow
“If Oscar Wilde was, by all accounts, the most desirable guest of his time—magnetic, provocative, and outrageously funny—then Joseph Bristow is, on the evidence of this volume (Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture), the most accomplished host of our own age.”
The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies
“Authoritative.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“Though other works have looked at particular cultural aspects of Wilde’s influence…none casts as interesting and broad a cultural net, with as much knowledge and nuance as this volume does.… Highly recommended.”
CHOICE
“Joseph Bristow’s Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture: The Making of a Legend brings together a dozen essays, most of which are devoted to illustrating Richard Ellmann’s assertion that ‘Wilde is one of us,‘ and all of which, taken together, richly complicate Ellman’s remark by making clear that we—the inheritors of Wilde’s life and work—have been an enormously varied group, interpreting and appropriating that legacy with a promiscuously Wildean freedom.”
Victorian Studies
Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture: The Making of a Legend explores the meteoric rise, sudden fall, and legendary resurgence of an immensely influential writer’s reputation from his hectic 1881 American lecture tour to recent Hollywood adaptations of his dramas. Always renowned—if not notorious—for his fashionable persona, Wilde courted celebrity at an early age. Later, he came to prominence as one of the most talented essayists and fiction writers of his time.
In the years leading up to his two-year imprisonment, Wilde stood among the foremost dramatists in London. But after he was sent down for committing acts of “gross indecency” it seemed likely that social embarrassment would inflict irreparable damage to his legacy. As this volume shows, Wilde died in comparative obscurity. Little could he have realized that in five years his name would come back into popular circulation thanks to the success of Richard Strauss’s opera Salome and Robert Ross’s edition of De Profundi. With each succeeding decade, the twentieth century continued to honor Wilde’s name by keeping his plays in repertory, producing dramas about his life, adapting his works for film, and devising countless biographical and critical studies of his writings.
This volume reveals why, more than a hundred years after his demise, Wilde’s value in the academic world, the auction house, and the entertainment industry stands higher than that of any modern writer.
Joseph Bristow is a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he edited the journal Nineteenth-Century Literature from 1997 to 2007. His recent books include The Fin-de-Siècle Poem, The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry, Oscar Wilde: Contextual Conditions, and the variorum edition of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. More info →
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978-0-8214-1838-3
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Release date: January 2009
448 pages
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Retail price: $59.95,
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Release date: January 2009
448 pages
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978-0-8214-4303-3
Release date: January 2009
448 pages
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“This is an impressive and important book that all scholars of Wilde, the fin-de-siécle, and modernism will find useful.”
Studies in English Literature 1500–1900
Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time
Edited by Christine L. Krueger
We are a century removed from Queen Victoria’s death, yet the culture that bears her name is alive and well across the globe. Not only is Victorian culture the subject of lively critical debate, but it draws widespread interest from popular audiences and consumers.Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time addresses the theme of the Victorians’ continuing legacy and its effect on our own culture and perception of the world.
Literature · Victorian Studies · British Literature · Literary Criticism
The Fin-de-Siècle Poem
English Literary Culture and the 1890s
Edited by Joseph Bristow
Featuring innovative research by emergent and established scholars, The Fin-de-Siècle Poem throws new light on the remarkable diversity of poetry produced at the close of the nineteenth century in England. Opening with a detailed preface that explains why literary historians have frequently underrated fin-de-siècle poetry, the collection shows how a strikingly rich body of lyrical and narrative poems anticipated many of the developments traditionally attributed to Modernism.
Literary Criticism | European | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh · Literary Criticism, Poetry · Literature · Victorian Studies
Graham R.
Rosamund Marriot Watson, Woman of Letters
By Linda K. Hughes
Rosamund Marriott Watson was a gifted poet, an erudite literary and art critic, and a daring beauty whose life illuminates fin-de-siècle London. In Graham R., Linda K. Hughes traces the poet’s development from accomplished ballads and sonnets, to avant-garde urban impressionism and New Woman poetry, to her anticipation of literary modernism.
Biography, Literary Figures · Biography & Autobiography | Women · 19th century · Literature · Victorian Studies
Africa Writes Back
The African Writers Series and the Launch of African Literature
By James Currey
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart provided the impetus for the foundation of Heinemann’s African Writers Series in 1962 with Achebe as the editorial adviser. Africa Writes Back presents portraits of the leading characters and the many consultants and readers providing reports and advice to new and established writers.
Literary Criticism, Africa · Africa · African Studies · African Literature
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