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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
Creator:
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
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.
The Clark Library owns the property rights to its collections but does not hold the copyright to these materials and therefore
cannot grant or deny permission to use them. Researchers are responsible for determining the copyright status of any materials
they may wish to use, investigating the owner of the copyright, and obtaining permission for their intended publication or
other use. In all cases, you must cite the Clark Library as the source with the following credit line: The William Andrews
Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
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
Croft-Cooke, Rupert, 1903-1980
Douglas, Alfred Bruce, Lord
Holland, Vyvyan Beresford, 1886-1967
Image, Selwyn
Leverson, Ada
Ricketts, Charles S., 1866-1931
Symons, A. J. A. (Alphonse James Albert), 1900-1941
Wilde, Constance, 1858-1898
Wilde, Lady, 1821-1896
Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900