"In this vigorous study, seventeen leading Irish artists, critics, and cultural commentators explore the neglected theme of Wilde's Irishness."--Jacket.
'Oscar's Shadow' deals with Wilde and his homosexuality within the context of Ireland and of Irish cultural perceptions of his sexuality. It investigates the questions: what was 'Oscar's shadow', his influence on 20th and 21st century Irish culture and literature? What has Wilde meant to Ireland from his disgrace to the present?
Set in the wild, romantic, northwest coast of Ireland during the mid-19th century, The Irishman’s Daughter pits Briana, her father, and sister, against a reckless English landlord and a plague that will kill and displace millions of Irish people. Ireland, 1845. To Briana Walsh, no place on earth is more beautiful than Carrowteige, County Mayo, with its sloping fields and rocky cliffs perched above the wild Atlantic. The small farms that surround the centuries-old Lear House are managed by her father, agent to the wealthy, reckless Sir Thomas Blakely. Tenant farmers sell the oats and rye they grow to pay rent to Sir Thomas, surviving on the potatoes that flourish in the remaining scraps of land. But when the potato crop falls prey to a devastating blight, families Briana has known all her life are left with no food, no resources, and no mercy from the English landowner, who seems indifferent to everything except profit. Rory Caulfield, the hard-working young farmer Briana hopes to marry, shares the locals’ despair—and their anger. There’s talk of violent reprisals against the callous gentry and their agents. Briana’s studious older sister, Lucinda, dreams of a future far beyond Mayo. But even as hunger and disease settle over the country, killing and displacing millions, Briana knows she must find a way to guide her family through one of Ireland’s darkest hours—toward hope, love, and a new beginning.
The fullest, most textural, most accurate—most human—account of Oscar Wilde's unique and dazzling life—based on extensive new research and newly discovered materials, from Wilde's personal letters and transcripts of his first trial to newly uncovered papers of his early romantic (and dangerous) escapades and the two-year prison term that shattered his soul and his life. "Simply the best modern biography of Wilde." —Evening Standard Drawing on material that has come to light in the past thirty years, including newly discovered letters, documents, first draft notebooks, and the full transcript of the libel trial, Matthew Sturgis meticulously portrays the key events and influences that shaped Oscar Wilde's life, returning the man "to his times, and to the facts," giving us Wilde's own experience as he experienced it. Here, fully and richly portrayed, is Wilde's Irish childhood; a dreamy, aloof boy; a stellar classicist at boarding school; a born entertainer with a talent for comedy and a need for an audience; his years at Oxford, a brilliant undergraduate punctuated by his reckless disregard for authority . . . his arrival in London, in 1878, "already noticeable everywhere" . . . his ten-year marriage to Constance Lloyd, the father of two boys; Constance unwittingly welcoming young men into the household who became Oscar's lovers, and dying in exile at the age of thirty-nine . . . Wilde's development as a playwright. . . becoming the high priest of the aesthetic movement; his successes . . . his celebrity. . . and in later years, his irresistible pull toward another—double—life, in flagrant defiance and disregard of England's strict sodomy laws ("the blackmailer's charter"); the tragic story of his fall that sent him to prison for two years at hard labor, destroying his life and shattering his soul.
An original and energetic examination of the relationship between theology, faith, religious history and national politics in the works of Oscar Wilde, which focuses in particular on his life-long attraction to Catholicism. Wilde's Protestant heritage is also scrutinised, and its continued influence on him, as well as his antagonism towards it, is related to the narrative modes he chose and the philosophical positions he adopted.
Nowhere in the nineteenth century did interest in folklore and mythology have a more thorough revival than in Ireland. There, in 1887, Lady Francesca Speranza Wilde, Oscar Wilde's mother and a well-known author in her own right, compiled this collection of charming, authentic folk tales. Collected from among the peasantry and retaining their original simplicity, the myths and legends reveal delightfully the Irish people's relationship with a spiritual and invisible world populated by fairies, elves, and evil beings. Included in Lady Wilde's collection, among others, are eerie tales of "The Horned Women," "The Holy Well and the Murderer," and "The Bride's Death-Song," as well as beguiling accounts of superstitions concerning the dead, celebrations and rites, animal legends, and ancient charms. The first book to link Irish folklore with nationalism, Legends illustrates the mythic underpinnings of the Irish character and signals the country's cultural reemergence. It remains, said the Evening Mail, "an important contribution to the literature of Ireland and the world's stock of folklore."
Though the short story is often regarded as central to the Irish canon, this text was the first comprehensive study of the genre for many years. Heather Ingman traces the development of the modern short story in Ireland from its beginnings in the nineteenth century to the present day. Her study analyses the material circumstances surrounding publication, examining the role of magazines and editors in shaping the form. Ingman incorporates recent critical thinking on the short story, traces international connections, and gives a central part to Irish women's short stories. Each chapter concludes with a detailed analysis of key stories from the period discussed, featuring Joyce, Edna O'Brien and John McGahern, among others. With its comprehensive bibliography and biographies of authors, this volume will be a key work of reference for scholars and students both of Irish fiction and of the modern short story as a genre.
One of the most famous love affairs in literary history is that of Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Bosie Douglas. As a direct consequence of this relationship, Wilde underwent three trials in 1895. In this text, Merlin Holland presents the original transcript of the Wilde versus Queensberry trial.
Wit, dandy, literary anarchist, self-publicist, and homosexual martyr: Wilde achieved fame and notoriety at a time when mass culture and communication promoted the 'new' in every area of British life. This book examines the rich interplay between Wilde's society and his writings and shows the remarkable recontextualizing of Wilde and his work in film, stage, and the media in the century following his death. - ;Authors in Context examines the work of major writers in relation to their own time and to the present day. Combining history with lively literary discussion, each volume provides comprehensive insight into texts in their context. Wit, dandy, literary anarchist, self-publicist, and homosexual martyr: Wilde achieved fame and notoriety at a time when mass culture and communication promoted the 'new' in every area of British life - 'New Women', 'New Hedonism', 'New Journalism', 'New Imperialism'. His plays, tales, and critical writings questioned traditional attitudes to religion, sexuality, women and the home, crime and punishment, and the freedom of the individual. This book examines the rich interplay between Wilde's society and his writings and shows the remarkable recontextualizing of Wilde and his work on stage, in film and the media in the century that has followed his death. -