Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Aesthetic Culture

Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Aesthetic Culture PDF Author: Michele Mendelssohn
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748697543
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
This book, the first fully sustained reading of Henry James's and Oscar Wilde's relationship, reveals why the antagonisms between both authors are symptomatic of the cultural oppositions within Aestheticism itself.

Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Aesthetic Culture

Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Aesthetic Culture PDF Author: Michele Mendelssohn
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748697543
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
This book, the first fully sustained reading of Henry James's and Oscar Wilde's relationship, reveals why the antagonisms between both authors are symptomatic of the cultural oppositions within Aestheticism itself.

The Forgotten Female Aesthetes

The Forgotten Female Aesthetes PDF Author: Talia Schaffer
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813919379
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Schaffer (English, Queens College, City U. of New York) analyzes the complex dialogue between male and female aesthetes in late Victorian England, exploring the heretofore insufficiently recognized role that women such as Lucas Malet, Ouida, and others played in this influential late Victorian literary movement. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Professions of Taste

Professions of Taste PDF Author: Jonathan Freedman
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804721783
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
The author traces Henry James's career-long encounter with the tradition of British aestheticism and places both in the context of the late-19th-century's professionalization and commodification of literary life. Professions of Taste reopens the question of later James in a new fashion and with a new perspective. A richer genealogy of modernism, and indeed postmodernism, begins to take shape, in which both the problematics of British aestheticism and James's relations with it play an important role. This book aims to enlighten the reader's understanding of the way Pre-Raphaelite concerns fertilized the aestheticist breeding grounds of Anglo-American modernism.

Wilde's Women

Wilde's Women PDF Author: Eleanor Fitzsimons
Publisher: ABRAMS
ISBN: 1468313266
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
“A lively debut biography of the flamboyant Irish writer . . . focusing on the women who loved and supported him” (Kirkus Reviews). In this essential work, Eleanor Fitzsimons reframes Oscar Wilde’s story and his legacy through the women in his life, including such scintillating figures as Florence Balcombe; actress Lillie Langtry; and his tragic and witty niece, Dolly, who, like Wilde, loved fast cars, cocaine, and foreign women. Fresh, revealing, and entertaining, full of fascinating detail and anecdotes, Wilde’s Women relates the untold story of how a beloved writer and libertine played a vitally sympathetic role on behalf of many women, and how they supported him in the midst of a Victorian society in the process of changing forever. “Fitzsimons reminds us of the many writers, actresses, political activists, professional beauties and aristocratic ladies who helped shape the life and legend of the era’s greatest wit, esthete and sexual martyr . . . provide[s] a potted biography of the multitalented writer and gay icon . . . highly enjoyable.” —The Washington Post “Fitzsimons brilliantly calls attention to the progressive ideas and beliefs which drew the most daring and interesting women of the time to his side. The depth and painstaking care of Fitzsimons’ research is a fitting tribute to Wilde’s fascinating life and exquisite writing—and really, what better compliment is there than that?” —High Voltage

The American Experiment and the Idea of Democracy in British Culture, 1776–1914

The American Experiment and the Idea of Democracy in British Culture, 1776–1914 PDF Author: Ruth Livesey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317045246
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
In nineteenth-century Britain, the effects of democracy in America were seen to spread from Congress all the way down to the personal habits of its citizens. Bringing together political theorists, historians, and literary scholars, this volume explores the idea of American democracy in nineteenth-century Britain. The essays span the period from Independence to the First World War and trace an intellectual history of Anglo-American relations during that period. Leading scholars trace the hopes and fears inspired by the American model of democracy in the works of commentators, including Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, Alexis de Tocqueville, Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill, Richard Cobden, Charles Dilke, Matthew Arnold, Henry James and W. T. Stead. By examining the context of debates about American democracy and notions of ’culture’, citizenship, and race, the collection sheds fresh light on well-documented moments of British political history, such as the Reform Acts, the Abolition of Slavery Act, and the Anti-Corn Law agitation. The volume also explores the ways in which British Liberalism was shaped by the American example and draws attention to the importance of print culture in furthering radical political dialogue between the two nations. As the comprehensive introduction makes clear, this collection makes an important contribution to transatlantic studies and our growing sense of a nineteenth-century modernity shaped by an Atlantic exchange. It is an essential reference point for all interested in the history of the idea of democracy, its political evolution, and its perceived cultural consequences.

Oscar Wilde in Context

Oscar Wilde in Context PDF Author: Kerry Powell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107016134
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
Concise and illuminating articles explore Oscar Wilde's life and work in the context of the turbulent landscape of his time.

Wilde in America: Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity

Wilde in America: Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity PDF Author: David M. Friedman
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393245918
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
The story of Oscar Wilde’s landmark 1882 American tour explains how this quotable literary eminence became famous for being famous. On January 3, 1882, Oscar Wilde, a twenty-seven-year-old “genius”—at least by his own reckoning—arrived in New York. The Dublin-born Oxford man had made such a spectacle of himself in London with his eccentric fashion sense, acerbic wit, and extravagant passion for art and home design that Gilbert & Sullivan wrote an operetta lampooning him. He was hired to go to America to promote that work by presenting lectures on interior decorating. But Wilde had his own business plan. He would go to promote himself. And he did, traveling some 15,000 miles and visiting 150 American cities as he created a template for fame creation that still works today. Though Wilde was only the author of a self-published book of poems and an unproduced play, he presented himself as a “star,” taking the stage in satin breeches and a velvet coat with lace trim as he sang the praises of sconces and embroidered pillows—and himself. What Wilde so presciently understood is that fame could launch a career as well as cap one. David M. Friedman’s lively and often hilarious narrative whisks us across nineteenth-century America, from the mansions of Gilded Age Manhattan to roller-skating rinks in Indiana, from an opium den in San Francisco to the bottom of the Matchless silver mine in Colorado—then the richest on earth—where Wilde dined with twelve gobsmacked miners, later describing their feast to his friends in London as “First course: whiskey. Second course: whiskey. Third course: whiskey.” But, as Friedman shows, Wilde was no mere clown; he was a strategist. From his antics in London to his manipulation of the media—Wilde gave 100 interviews in America, more than anyone else in the world in 1882—he designed every move to increase his renown. There had been famous people before him, but Wilde was the first to become famous for being famous. Wilde in America is an enchanting tale of travel and transformation, comedy and capitalism—an unforgettable story that teaches us about our present as well as our past.

Making Oscar Wilde

Making Oscar Wilde PDF Author: Michèle Mendelssohn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198802366
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Packed with new evidence, Making Oscar Wilde tells the untold story of a local Irish eccentric who became a global cultural icon. This must-read book dramatizes Oscar Wilde's remarkable rise in Victorian England and post-Civil War America. Michèle Mendelssohn interweaves biography and social history to reveal a life like no other.

Ethical Aestheticism in the Early Works of Henry James

Ethical Aestheticism in the Early Works of Henry James PDF Author: Tomoko Eguchi
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443894117
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This study re-locates the work of Henry James by revealing parallels between the aestheticism of John Ruskin and that of James. It explores a mix of well-known fictional texts alongside James’s essays and tales, which are less frequently analysed, but which, nevertheless, offer important insights into James’s attitude to his artistic method. Tracing James’s early development in comparison with Ruskin’s, this book also explores German Romantic thought and the idealism of Kant, Goethe and Hegel. While examining the German connections with James, this study is also alert to James’s relations with Walter Pater and French realism, to which James became increasingly close in the mid-1880s. Rather than placing James within one single category, it demonstrates how James interfused Romanticism and realism in establishing his own form of aestheticism. Shedding light on James’s period of apprenticeship, this book therefore articulates the Victorian concept of ‘aestheticism’ as used by James and Ruskin.

Vernon Lee

Vernon Lee PDF Author: Patricia Pulham
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230287522
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
This, the first collection of essays on the aesthete and intellectual Vernon Lee, offers a wide range of critical writings by scholars. Key works are examined including Euphorion, Hauntings: Fantastic Stories and Music and Its Lovers . New light is shed on Lee's relationships with contemporaries such as Lee-Hamilton, Pater and Wilde.