Oscar Wilde in America: The Interviews

This comprehensive and authoritative collection of Oscar Wilde's American interviews affords readers a fresh look at the making of a literary legend. Better known in as a cultural icon than a serious writer at twenty-six years old, he had by then published just one volume of poems , Wilde was brought to North America for a major lecture tour on Aestheticism and the decorative arts that was organized to publicize a touring opera, Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience, which lampooned him and satirized the Aesthetic "movement" he had been imported to represent.

In this year-long series of broadly distributed and eagerly read newspaper interviews, Wilde excelled as a master of self-promotion. He visited major cities from New York to San Francisco but also small railroad towns along the way, granting interviews to newspapers wherever asked. With characteristic aplomb, he adopted the role as the ambassador of Aestheticism, and reporters noted that he was dressed for the part.

He wooed and flattered his hosts everywhere, pronouncing Miss Alsatia Allen of Montgomery, Alabama, the most beautiful young lady he had seen in the United States, adding, "This is a remark, my dear fellow, I supposed I have made of some lady in every city I have visited in this country. It could be appropriately made.

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American women are very beautiful. Confronted at every turn by an insatiable audience of sometimes hostile interviewers, the young poet tried out a number of phrases, ideas, and strategies that ultimately made him famous as a novelist and playwright. Seeing America and Americans for the first time, Wilde's perception often proved as sharp as his wit; the echoes of both resound in much of his later writings. His interviewers also succeeded in getting him to talk about many other topics, from his opinions of British and American writers he thought Poe was America's greatest poet to his views of Mormonism.

This exceptional volume cites all ninety-one of Wilde's interviews and contains transcripts of forty-eight of them, and it also includes his lecture on his travels in America. Would you like to tell us about a lower price? If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support? Better known in as a cultural icon than a serious writer, Oscar Wilde was brought to North America for a major lecture tour on Aestheticism and the decorative arts. With characteristic aplomb, he adopted the role as the ambassador of Aestheticism, and he tried out a number of phrases, ideas, and strategies that ultimately made him famous as a novelist and playwright.

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Oscar Wilde in America: The Interviews

University of Illinois Press; 1st edition July 2, Language: Start reading Oscar Wilde in America: The Interviews on your Kindle in under a minute. Don't have a Kindle? Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features: Share your thoughts with other customers.

Write a customer review. Showing of 5 reviews. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Having recently completed a musical adaptation of Oscar Wilde's Canterville Ghost, which I call The Ghost Of Canterville Chase, in which I use an actor playing Oscar to provide occasional narrative, I wanted to read what the reporters in various newspapers across the country had to say about him.

Oscar was only 26 at the time of his tour and the comments from dozens of reporters are very similar and many are funny. One of Oscar's talks is also included in the book and parts are hilarious. Whiskey was the first course.

Oscar Wilde in America

Whiskey was the second course, and the third course was whiskey. One was killed in battle during World War I; the second son became a writer and married a lady he worked with at the British Broadcasting Corporation. They had a son, Merlin Holland, who resides in France. He is now 67 years of age and is also a writer and lecturer. I am British, born in the north-west of England in a old town called Preston, which is about 30 miles from the larger cities of Liverpool and Manchester. I was a career Chartered Surveyor in the UK and abroad but more recently have founded my own businesses including a Bermuda exporting company and freelance web design.

My passion for Oscar Wilde borders on an occupation.

Since but I had been a frequent visitor to the States for many years before that. It goes back to high school. I would have been about 13 or 14 at the time and the class took turns at reading the play aloud. I was amazed at its lightness, and at the sharp and consistently witty repartee of the dialogue, especially received, as it was, by a teenage ear recently accustomed the then esoteric texts of Shakespeare or George Eliot. It was a memory that stuck with me until I rediscovered Wilde's life and other works many years later.

Wilde was a prolific letter writer and over 1, of them survive in a collected edition.

In Conversation

They are essentially the autobiography he never wrote. This is not to diminish any of his works - it's just that I feel that in the letters you get all the ingredients of great literature: The walking tour was the spur but I wanted to build a definitive body of knowledge about a specific area of Wilde's life.

New York was the logical choice because I am resident nearby and Wilde spent a lot of time here, on a year-long lecture tour, a fact little known even in America. Ostensibly he was promoting the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta that ironically was lampooning his school of thought.

But he also had something to say, a talent for saying it, and someone prepared to pay him for saying it. I believe it was a formative period for Wilde, and well worth capturing, not only for the scholar, but for anyone interested a great period story. But successive biographers have recycled one or two familiar stories. And there was one book now out-of-print that dealt anecdotally with the whole tour of America and Canada.

But there is no definitive source book for the year-long lecture tour, and certainly no single account of Wilde's time in and around New York, where Wilde lived and to where he returned. It has taken several years traversing leafy streets and dusty corridors to assemble the palette. The canvas is growing however, as occasionally I unearth pieces that weren't in the picture before.

Also there is the possibility of a new book on the subject in the near future. It was a mixed reception.

Project MUSE - Oscar Wilde in America

Wilde's arrival was much anticipated and from the moment he stepped off the boat he didn't disappoint. Wilde was received warmly by polite society, especially by ladies of fashion, and receptions and dinners were given in his honor. Conversely, he was subject to the ridicule of the press and the abuse of one or two paragons of Victorian virtue.

Generally, people didn't know what to make of him, as he was, in many ways, ahead of his time. Wilde came with many letters of introduction and made friends of his own along the way; for example, he got along famously with Walt Whitman. Many people went out of their way to make Wilde's visit enjoyable and he shared their homes in the city and at the shore in the summer.