Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Art of Creating a Great Sensation: Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Celebrity Authorship and Afterlives in English and American Literature

  • 436 Accesses

Abstract

With the advent of the ‘Wilde Moment’ of the 1990s, the combined efforts of academia, literary criticism, theater practice and popular culture have successfully turned Oscar Wilde into one of the most marketed English-language writers. Wilde’s reinvention as an icon of postmodern culture relies on a tangled web of art, biography and politics, which lies at the heart of his public image as constructed by contemporary audiences. This chapter investigates the production and consumption of the author’s persona and investigates how Wilde’s afterlife in contemporary bioplays both attests to, and is influenced by, their subject’s cultural iconicity. The approach shows that resurrections of the author are both expressions of, and revisionist commentaries on, the impact of his work and thus contribute to the posthumous reputation of their subject.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Adamson Livingston, L. (2009). To be said to have done it is everything: The theatrical Oscar Wilde and possibilities for the (re)construction of biography. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 24(1), 15–33.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alberge, D. (2011, December 1). Oscar Wilde’s refurbished tomb ends lip disservice. The Guardian.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boorstin, D. J. (1992). The image: A guide to pseudo-events in America. New York: Vintage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. (1996). The rules of art: Genesis and structure of the literary field (trans: Emanuel, S.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brandreth, G. (2008, April 6). The brand of Oscar Wilde. The Sunday Times. http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/culture/books/article83741.ece. Accessed 1 Nov 2015.

  • Carlson, M. (2003). The haunted stage: The theatre as memory machine. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Denisoff, D. (2007). Decadence and aestheticism. In G. Marshall (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to the Fin de Siècle (pp. 31–52). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dougal, J. (2012). Robert Burns and the re-making of national memory in contemporary Scotland. Authorship, 1(2), 1–14.

    Google Scholar 

  • Driessens, O. (2013). Celebrity capital: Redefining celebrity using field theory. Theory and Society, 42(5), 543–560.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eagleton, T. (2004). Saint Oscar. London: Bookmarks.

    Google Scholar 

  • English, J. F. (2005). The economy of prestige: Prizes, awards and the circulation of cultural value. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Erll, A., & Rigney, A. (2009). Introduction: Cultural memory and its dynamics. In A. Erll & A. Rigney (Eds.), Mediation, remediation, and the dynamics of cultural memory (pp. 1–11). Berlin: De Gruyter.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Fomichenko, A. (2013). Oscar Wilde’s celebrity: Public persona as a character. In A. A. Colvin (Ed.), The performance of celebrity: Creating, maintaining and controlling fame (pp. 3–13). Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1990). The history of sexuality. Volume 1: An introduction (trans: Hurley, R.). New York: Vintage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Franssen, P., & Hoenselaars, T. (1999). Introduction. The author as character: Defining a genre. In P. Franssen & T. Hoenselaars (Eds.), The author as character: Representing historical writers in Western literature (pp. 11–35). Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Friedman, D. M. (2014). Wilde in America: Oscar Wilde and the invention of modern celebrity. New York: W.W. Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gillespie, M. P. (1996). Oscar Wilde and the poetics of ambiguity. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldman, J. (2011). Modernism is the literature of celebrity. Austin: University of Texas Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guy, J., & Small, I. (2000). Oscar Wilde’s profession: Writing and the culture industry in the late nineteenth century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Haase, H. (2004). Oscar für alle: Die Darstellung Oscar Wildes in biofiktionaler Literatur. Münster: LIT.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huber, W. (1999). Byronic Bioplays. In F. Wilson (Ed.), Byromania: Portraits of the artist in nineteenth- and twentieth-century culture (pp. 93–108). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Huber, W., & Middeke, M. (1995). Biography in contemporary drama. In B. Reitz (Ed.), Drama and reality (pp. 133–143). Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hutcheon, L. (1995). The politics of postmodernism. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • John, J. (2010). Dickens and mass culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kaplan, C. (2007). Victoriana: Histories, fictions, criticism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kaye, R. A. (2002). The Wilde moment. Victorian Literature and Culture, 30(1), 347–352.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kettner. (2015). Kettner’s website. http://www.kettners.com/drinking/. Accessed 1 Nov 2015.

  • Kilroy, T. (1997). The secret fall of Constance Wilde. Oldcastle: The Gallery Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kilroy, T. (2004). My scandalous life. Oldcastle: The Gallery Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kilroy Archive (n.d.). Thomas Kilroy Archive, James Hardiman Library, National University of Ireland, Galway.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kingston, A. (2007). Oscar Wilde as a character in Victorian fiction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kohlke, M. (2008). Introduction: Speculations in and on the Neo-Victorian encounter. Neo-Victorian Studies, 1(1), 1–18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kohlke, M. (2013). Neo-Victorian biofiction and the special/spectral case of Barbara Chase-Riboud’s Hottentot Venus. Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies, 18(3), 4–21.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krämer, L. (2003). Oscar Wilde in Roman, Drama und Film: Eine medienkomparatistische Analyse fiktionaler Biographien. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krämer, L. (2005). Oscar Wilde as an object of the English heritage industry. Irish Studies Review, 13(3), 359–367.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lanters, J. (2010). Impossible promise: The child and the androgyne in Thomas Kilroy’s The secret fall of Constance Wilde and My scandalous life. Ilha do Desterro, 58, 267–288.

    Google Scholar 

  • Litvack, L. (2013). An aesthete in America. In K. Powell & P. Raby (Eds.), Oscar Wilde in context (pp. 39–48). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • MacCormaic, R. (2011, June 30). Government ‘convinced’ IMF under Lagarde will back cut in bailout rate. Irish Times.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marshall, P. D. (2006). Intimately intertwined in the most public way: Celebrity and journalism. In P. D. Marshall (Ed.), The celebrity culture reader. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mayer, S. (2014). The importance of commemorating literary celebrity: Oscar Wilde and contemporary literary memorial culture. In S. Mikowski (Ed.), Ireland and popular culture (pp. 39–52). Oxford: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • McMullan, A. (2002). Masculinity and masquerade in Thomas Kilroy’s Double cross and The secret fall of Constance Wilde. Irish University Review, 32(1), 126–136.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mendelssohn, M. (2013). Oscar Wilde, Henry James and the fate of aestheticism. In K. Powell & P. Raby (Eds.), Oscar Wilde in context (pp. 137–149). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meyer-Dinkgräfe, D. (2005). Biographical plays about famous artists. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Middeke, M. (1999). Introduction. In W. Huber & M. Middeke (Eds.), Biofictions: The rewriting of romantic lives in contemporary fiction and drama (pp. 1–25). Rochester: Camden House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Middeke, M. (2002). Oscar, the proto-postmodern? Peter Ackroyd’s The last testament of Oscar Wilde. In U. Böker, R. Corballis, & J. A. Hibbard (Eds.), The importance of reinventing Oscar: Versions of Wilde during the last 100 years (pp. 207–217). Amsterdam: Rodopi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Millar, P. (1995, January 8). The new importance of being Oscar. The Sunday Times.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mitchell, K. (2010). History and cultural memory in Neo-Victorian fiction: Victorian afterimages. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Moran, J. (2000). Star authors: Literary celebrity in America. London: Pluto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ommundsen, W. (2004). Sex, soap and sainthood: Beginning to theorise literary celebrity. Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 3, 45–56.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peter, J. (1997, October 19). Mythology and the married woman. The Sunday Times.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quinn, M. L. (1990). Celebrity and the semiotics of acting. New Theater Quarterly, 6(22), 154–161.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rigney, A. (2005). Plenitude, scarcity and the circulation of cultural memory. Journal of European Studies, 35(1), 11–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Robinson, B. J. (2011). The other’s other: Neo-Victorian depictions of Constance Lloyd Wilde Holland. Neo-Victorian Studies, 4(1), 22–43.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roche, A. (1998, Spring). The real Constance. Irish Literary Supplement, p. 14.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sammells, N. (2000). Wilde style: The plays and prose of Oscar Wilde. Harlow: Pearson Education.

    Google Scholar 

  • Savu, L. E. (2010). Postmortem postmodernists: The afterlife of the author in recent narrative. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schiavi, M. R. (2004). Wildean War: Politics of Fins-de-siècle spectatorship. Modern Drama, 47(3), 399–422.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shires, L. M. (1995). The author as spectacle and commodity: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Thomas Hardy. In C. T. Christ & J. O. Jordan (Eds.), Victorian literature and the Victorian visual imagination (pp. 198–212). Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sloan, J. (2003). Authors in context: Oscar Wilde. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stokes, J. (1994). Wilde interpretations. Modern Drama, 37(1), 156–174.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sweet, M. (2007, May 13). I like a well-endowed monkey, don’t you? The Independent.

    Google Scholar 

  • Todd, R. (1996). Consuming fictions: The Booker Prize and fiction in Britain today. London: Bloomsbury.

    Google Scholar 

  • Waldrep, S. (2004). The aesthetics of self-invention: Oscar Wilde to David Bowie. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walshe, É. (2011). Oscar’s shadow: Wilde, homosexuality and modern Ireland. Cork: Cork University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wernick, A. (1993). Authorship and the supplement of promotion. In M. Biriotti & N. Miller (Eds.), What is an author? (pp. 85–103). Manchester: Manchester University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilde, O. (1994a). De Profundis. In O. Wilde, The complete works of Oscar Wilde (pp. 980–1059). Glasgow: Harper Collins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilde, O. (1994b). The remarkable rocket. In O. Wilde, The complete works of Oscar Wilde (pp. 294–301). Glasgow: Harper Collins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilde, O. (2000). In R. Hart-Davis & M. Holland (Eds.), The complete letters of Oscar Wilde. London: Fourth Estate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wood, J. (2007). The resurrection of Oscar Wilde: A cultural afterlife. Cambridge, UK: Lutterworth.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, Oxford, UK

    Sandra Mayer

Authors
  1. Sandra Mayer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Gaston Franssen

  2. Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Rick Honings

Copyright information

© 2016 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Mayer, S. (2016). The Art of Creating a Great Sensation: Oscar Wilde (1854–1900). In: Franssen, G., Honings, R. (eds) Celebrity Authorship and Afterlives in English and American Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55868-8_6

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation