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Wilde (Oscar) and his Literary Circle Collection:
Correspondence
MS. Wilde
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Contributing Institution:
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Title: Oscar Wilde and his Literary Circle Collection: Correspondence,
Identifier/Call Number: MS. Wilde
Physical Description:
38.36 Linear feet
Date (inclusive): 1819, 1849-1957,
1962
Abstract: Material described in this finding aid represents the main
correspondence portion of the Oscar Wilde and his Literary Circle collection at the Clark
Library. The collection includes letters by Wilde, his wife, his mother, Lord Alfred
Douglas, More Adey, Christopher Millard, Robert Ross, and Adela Schuster, among many
others.
Physical Location: Clark Library.
Language of Material:
English .
William Andrews Clark, Jr. acquired the nucleus of the Clark Library's Oscar Wilde
collection from Dulau and Company, London, in 1929. Most of the Dulau material had been in
the possession of Robert B. Ross (Oscar Wilde's literary executor), Christopher S. Millard
(a.k.a. Stuart Mason, the Wilde bibliographer), and Vyvyan B. Holland (Wilde's only
surviving son). Since 1929, the Clark Library has steadily purchased important new material
and in the year 2000, the collection was estimated to contain over 65,000 items.
Collection is open for research.
Copyright has not been assigned to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. All requests
for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the
Librarian. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the William Andrews Clark
Memorial Library as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply
permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained. For additional copyright
information related to Oscar Wilde, contact Merlin Holland, email:
merlin.holland[at]wanadoo.fr
Microfilm copies of portions of the collection are available for patron use.
[Identification of item, subseries and series], Oscar Wilde and His Literary Circle
Collection : Correspondence. William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of
California, Los Angeles.
Many of the manuscript and print materials described within this finding aid have also been
cataloged individually. Those individual records for print materials are available via the
UCLA Library's online catalog, while the records for manuscript materials are accessible
only through the Clark's physical card catalog. In 1957, a printed catalog of all
Wilde-related works then owned by the Clark Library (approximately 2900 items) was compiled
by John Charles Finzi and published as
Oscar Wilde and his Literary
Circle
by the University of California Press. Over the course of the next four
decades, many new Clark acquisitions were added to the collection and approximately
one-third of the collection was microfilmed at least once. In 2000, the first version of the
Oscar Wilde and his Literary Circle online finding aid, which described
all archival materials in the Clark collections related to Wilde
and his circle was written and encoded in EAD by John Howard Fowler. In 2009, this original
finding aid was separated into several parts, edited and re-encoded by Rebecca Fenning in
order to make its very large size (over 1000 pages) and scope more manageable for
researchers. Instead of one guide describing the entire collection, there are now 5 more
easily navigated guides devoted to different components of the collection.
Oscar Wilde was born Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde in Dublin, Ireland, October 16,
1854. He attended Trinity College and Magdalen College, Oxford, winning the Newdigate prize
in 1878 for the poem
Ravenna. He subsequently established
himself in London society as a champion of the new Aesthetic movement, advocating "art for
art's sake," and publishing reviews and his
Poems (1881). After
being satirized (and made famous) as Bunthorne, the fleshly aesthetic poet in Gilbert and
Sullivan's
Patience, he made a year-long lecture tour of the
United States, speaking on literature and the decorative arts. After his return to London,
he married Constance Lloyd in 1884; they had two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan Holland. In 1891 he
met and began a love affair with the handsome but temperamental poet, Lord Alfred
Douglas.
The 1890s saw both Wilde's greatest literary triumphs and his tragic downfall. His only
novel,
The Picture of Dorian Gray, appeared in 1891. The most
famous of his witty social comedies--
Lady Windermere's Fan
(1892),
A Woman of No Importance (1893),
An Ideal Husband (1895), and
The Importance of
Being Earnest
(1895)--were written and produced for the London stage. But in
1895,after becoming entangled in an unsuccessful libel suit against Douglas's father, Wilde
was prosecuted for homosexuality. Convicted, he was sentenced to two years' hard labor.
While in prison, Wilde wrote
De Profundis, a letter to
Douglas, and after his release, he published the long poem,
The Ballad
of Reading Gaol
(1898). But despite these final works, his career was essentially
over. Bankrupt and in exile, his health ruined in prison, he died in Paris in 1900.
The overall Oscar Wilde and His Literary Circle Collection is comprised of correspondence,
draft manuscripts, notebooks, photographs, drawings, newspaper clippings and other items
that reflect the life of Oscar Wilde and his colleagues in the context of their contemporary
literary and artistic world. This finding aid describes only the correspondence portion of
the larger Wilde collection. Items described here include correspondence to and from Wilde,
his wife Constance, his mother Lady Wilde, and friends and colleagues, inclunding (among
many others) Lord Alfred Douglas, More Adey, Christopher Millard, Robert Baldwin Ross, Adela
Schuster and Ada Leverson.
The following correspondence is arranged in alphabetical order by the sender's last
name.
Items listed below may include references to the numbers assigned to them in John Charles
Finzi's
Oscar Wilde and his Literary Circle, and/or their item
numbers from the 1929 Dulau auction catalog. Some items may also include references to
available microfilm copies. The Clark Library shelfmark will always be given, but all
unbound materials are also identified by their box and folder numbers.
Items organized by date are organized by the earliest possible date assignable. The most
likely approximation of the date will usually be found in the shelfmark of each item.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Authors and publishers--Correspondence
Authors, English--19th century--Correspondence
Authors, Irish--19th century--Correspondence
Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900--Archives.
Beerbohm, Max, Sir, 1872-1956
Douglas, Alfred Bruce, Lord
Holland, Vyvyan Beresford, 1886-1967
Image, Selwyn
Leverson, Ada
Wilde, Constance, 1858-1898
Wilde, Lady, 1821-1896
Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900