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 Wildes
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 arts

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 Wildes

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)

Wildes works:

The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
Lord Arthur Savilles Crime and Other Stories (1891)
Lady Windermeres Fan (1892)
Salom (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. Jamess 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.

Pre 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