AKC 2 T&RS – Autumn Term 2007 – Afterlives 11/10/07
AKC 2 - 11 OCTOBER 2007
THE AFTERLIFE OF OSCAR WILDE
PROF JOHN STOKES, KING'S COLLEGE LONDON
THE TRIALS OF OSCAR WILDE
CHRONOLOGY:
1854 Oscar Wilde born in Dublin
1864-71 At Portora Royal School, Enniskillemn
1871-74 At Trinity College Dublin
1874-78 Magdalen College Oxford. Graduates with a First Class degree in Classical Moderations
1879 Moves to London
1882 Lectures in the US and Canada
1883 Resident in Paris
1884 Marries Constance Lloyd
1885 Moves into Tite Street, Chelsea
Passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act
‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’ series in the Pall Mall
Gazette
[Throughout the 1880s Wilde is working as professional journalist producing book reviews, editing The Woman’s World and writing short fiction, including children’s stories and ghost stories.]
1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray appears in Lippincott’s Magazine.
1891 The Picture of Dorian Gray published in book form with additional chapters and a preface.
Intentions (Critical Essays)
Writes Salome (its London production is banned in 1892)
Meets Lord Alfred Douglas
1892 Lady Windermere’s Fan
1893 A Woman of No Importance
1895 January: An Ideal Husband
February: The Importance of being Earnest
April: Wilde sues the Marquess of Queensberry for libel and
loses.
Wilde is arrested and charged with indecency and sodomy but
the jury fails to agree
May: Second Trial. Wilde is convicted and sentenced to two years hard labour. He is taken to Pentonville and later to Reading Gaol where he writes the long prison letter that is known as ‘De Profundis’.
1897 Wilde is released from Reading and moves to France. He writes The
Ballad of Reading Gaol which is published in 1898.
1900 Wilde dies in Paris on November 30.
From the Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 (‘the Labouchere Amendment ‘):
‘Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or is party to the commission of, or procures the commission by any other male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and being convicted thereof shall be liable at the discretion of the court to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.’
FURTHER READING:
Beckson, Karl, London in the 1890s. A Cultural History (New York and London: W.W.Norton) 1992
Cohen, Ed., Talk on the Wilde Side (London: Routledge) 1993
Cocks, Harry, Nameless Offences (London: I.B.Tauris) 2003
Cook, Matt, London and the Culture of Homosexuality (Cambridge University Press) 2003.
Ellmann, Richard, Oscar Wilde (London: Hamish Hamilton) 1987 etc
Kosofsky Sedgwick, Eve, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press) 1991 etc
Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1 (London: Allen Lane) 1979 etc
Holland, Merlin, Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess. The Real
Trial of Oscar Wilde (London: Fourth Estate) 2005.
Houlbrook, Matt, Queer London (University of Chicago Press) 2005.
Kaplan, Morris, Sodom on Thames: Sex, Love and Scandal in
Wilde Times (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press) 2005
Ledger, Sally, and Roger Luckhurst, The Fin de Siècle. A Reader in
Cultural History c. 1880-1900 (Oxford University Press) 2000
Showalter, Elaine, Sexual Anarchy (London: Bloomsbury) 1991
Sinfield, Alan, The Wilde Century (London: Cassell) 1994.
Turner, Mark, Backward Glances (London: Reaktion) 2003
Von Eckhardt, Wolf et al, Oscar Wilde’s London (New York: Doubleday) 1987.
Walkowitz, Judith R., City of Dreadful Delight (London: Virago) 1992
Full details about the AKC course, including copies of the handouts, can be found on the AKC website at: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/akc. If you have any queries please contact the AKC Course Administrator on ext 2333 or via email at . Please make a note in your diary that the AKC Examination will take place on Monday 21 April between 14.30 and 16.30.
YOU MUST REGISTER FOR THE COURSE using the form on the website. You will need to register for the exam separately, information will be provided next semester.