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Dunne, Father Cuthbert, Collection on Oscar Wilde
MS.1973.016
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Contributing Institution:
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Title: Father Cuthbert Dunne Collection on Oscar Wilde
Creator:
Dunne, Cuthbert, Father, 1869-1950
source:
Croft-Cooke, Rupert, 1903-1980
Creator:
Burke, Edmund, Father
Identifier/Call Number: MS.1973.016
Physical Description:
1 box
(5 linear inches)
Date (inclusive): 1900-1957
Abstract: This collection contains Father Cuthbert Dunne's collection of papers related to the death of Oscar Wilde and consist of his
memoirs of officiating at Wilde's deathbed conversion, correspondence, and transcriptions of newspaper accounts.
Language of Material:
English
.
Purchase, Zeitlin and Ver Brugge, May 1973 (from Christie's London auction, April 4, 1973, lot 239). Previously in the collection
of Rupert Croft-Cooke.
Additional notes and descriptions of this collection (both bookseller/auction descriptions as well as notes possibly dating
to Croft-Cooke's acquistion) are included in Box 1/Folder 1.
Father Cuthbert Dunne, C.P. was an Irish Passionist priest born in Dublin, Ireland in 1869. In 1900, he was officiating at
St. Joseph's Church on Avenue Hoche in Paris, when Robert Ross came to request a priest to visit Oscar Wilde's bedside at
the Hotel d'Alsace. Father Dunne baptised Wilde, and adminstered the last rites before his death; he also later officiated
at Wilde's funeral. Dunne did not speak publicly about Wilde's death until 1945, when he finally responded to inaccurate portrayals
of Wilde in a pamphlet titled "The Pure of Heart" by Rev. Daniel A. Lord. Dunne died in Dublin November 4, 1950.
Sources Consulted:
* Rev. Edmund Burke, "Oscar Wilde: The Final Scene," The London Magazine (May 1961): pages 37-43.
* Materials within this collection.
This collection physically processed and described in January 2023 by Rebecca Fenning Marschall.
This collection contains Father Cuthbert Dunne's memoirs, letters, research files, and ephemera related to the death of Oscar
Wilde. A large portion of the collection consists of various drafts of Father Dunne's memoirs about attending to Wilde on
his deathbed, presumably much of it written between 1945-1950, when Dunne sought, after many years of silence, to correct
the publicly circulating stories about Wilde's conversion and death. In addition to letters from 1945-1950 to Daniel A. Lord,
Father Edmund Burke, C.P., and others, this collection includes correspondence and other materials dating to Wilde's illness
and death in 1900. Dunne kept calling cards from Robert Ross (one of which has the "sick-call" request for a priest to visit
Wilde's bedside written on the verso), and letters from Ross, Vyvyan Holland, and Father Joseph Brown of Stonyhurst College.
Before Dunne's death in November 1950, he gave most of his Wilde papers to colleague Father Edmund Burke. Several letters
from 1950-1957 from Burke's collection are also included here.
Copyright has not been assigned to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA. All requests for permission to publish
or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Clark Librarian. Permission for publication is given on behalf
of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA 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.
Collection is open for research.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Croft-Cooke, Rupert, 1903-1980
Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900
Holland, Vyvyan Beresford, 1886-1967