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Abstract
Little is known about the circumstances of Oscar Wilde's employment by the Pall Mall Gazette, and even less is known about his engagement with its editorial policies. His reviews are often neglected, but when examined are considered in isolation rather than as a contribution to a serial format. The Pall Mall Gazette's structure provides a new context in which to understand Wilde's reviews, which were inevitably shaped by the paper's editorial policies. The paper hired reviewers who could help it maintain a balance between politics and light relief. With an understanding of audience affect and cognition, Wilde employed a range of strategies to manage reader response. The reviews analysed in this article show Wilde exploring the material, and psychological aspects of books and reading.
Notes
1. CitationWilde, De Profundis, 160.
2. Frankel, Oscar Wilde's Decorated Books, 133.
3. Frankel, Oscar Wilde's Decorated Books, 4.
4. Frankel, Oscar Wilde's Decorated Books, 177.
5. Frankel, Oscar Wilde's Decorated Books, 3.
6. Frankel, Oscar Wilde's Decorated Books, 5.
7. Frankel, Oscar Wilde's Decorated Books, 9.
8. CitationGuy and Small, Oscar Wilde's Profession, 37.
9. CitationSmith and Helfand, eds, Oscar Wilde's Oxford Notebooks: A Portrait of Mind in the Making, 165.
10. CitationBlades, The Enemies of Books, 104.
11. CitationMcDonald, “Book History among the Disciplines” (lecture).
12. Kerrigan, “The Editor as Reader,” in The Practice and Representation of Reading in England, 103 (102–24).
13. Jardine, “Reading and the Technology of Textual Affect,” in The Practice and Representation of Reading in England, 78 (77–101).
14. Johns. “The Physiology of Reading in Restoration England,” The Practice and Representation of Reading in England, 140 (140–61).
15. Kerrigan, 106.
16. CitationWilkes, “Jewsbury, Geraldine Endsor (1812–1880),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, n.p.
17. CitationDames, The Physiology of the Novel: Reading, Neural Science and the Form of Victorian Fiction, 34.
18. See Citation“The Letters of a Great Woman,” Pall Mall Gazette 34, no. 911 (March 6, 1886): 4–5. Also Citationsee “The Poet's Corner” where Wilde critiques the poet for ignoring psychological concepts such as the “Ego” and “non-Ego”, 47, no. 7193 (April 6, 1888): 3.
19. CitationAnon., “A Batch of Novels,” Pall Mall Gazette, 45, no. 6902 (May 2, 1887): 11.
20. CitationSully, “George Eliot's Art,” 388.
21. CitationAnon., “The Butterfly's Boswell,” 378.
22. Price, “Introduction: Reading Matter,” 11.
23. CitationFrederic Whyte, The Life of , 85.
24. Aristotle at Afternoon Tea: The Rare Oscar Wilde, ed. CitationJohn Wyse Jackson, xi.
25. Helfand and Smith, 140.
26. Helfand and Smith, 115.
27. CitationAnon., “Muscle-Reading by Mr Stuart Cumberland,” 39, no. 5994 (May 24, 1884): 2.
28. Stead states that the proprietor Frederick Greenwood attempted to wed literature and journalism by having ‘Occasional Notes’ and book reviews with various ‘reminisces’, all three of which were popular with readers. What is more, the paper only had a circulation of 8000 to 10,000, but it had strong political connections, and a readership with social and economic strength. In the words of Stead, in the earlier years Greenwood worked hard to produce the paper, which ‘commanded the respect of the intelligent and cultured few’. Stead also states that observers of the paper declared that ‘the destinies of Egypt were not decided at Downing Street but at Northumberland Street’ (the paper's headquarters). This is a reference to Greenwood's tip to Lord Derby to secure shares in the Suez Canal before France resulting in a profit of 16 million pounds. CitationAnon., “Character Sketch: February: The Pall Mall Gazette,” 7, Review of Reviews (February, 1893): 143 and 146.
29. CitationGrant Allen, Physiological Aesthetics, 262.
30. The term ‘psychological aesthetician’ was originally coined by Allen. Allen distinguished his method from that of art critics such as John Ruskin and Edward Poynter who, Allen contended, confined their discussion on aesthetics to the ‘very highest feelings of the most cultivated classes in the most civilised nations’. The ‘psychological aesthetician’, on the other hand, looked to ‘those simpler and more universal feelings which are common to all the race, and which form the groundwork for every higher mode of aesthetic sensibility’. The rest of Allen's argument presents the ‘psychological aesthetician’ as one who studies art (which includes sculptor, painting, poetry and literature), by examining the mental and sensory operations involved in the perception of the art-object. This method examines the feelings aroused in art in the context of evolutionary science, and focuses on ‘visual beauty in form’, ‘colour’, or ‘brilliancy’, and/or ‘auditory beauty’. See Citation“Aesthetic Evolution in Man,” Mind 5, no. 20 (October, 1880): 446 (445–64).
31. CitationAnon., “Mr Morris's Odyssey,” Pall Mall Gazette 45, no. 6897 (April 26, 1887): 5.
32. CitationStokes, In the Nineties, 21.
33. CitationAnon., “The Pall Mall Gazette,” The Sphinx (September, 1868): 67.
34. CitationAnon., “The Pall Mall Gazette,” The Sphinx (September, 1868): 67
35. CitationAnon., “The Pall Mall Gazette,” The Sphinx (September, 1868): 67
36. Dames, 39.
37. CitationRadder, Newspaper, Make-up and Headlines, 155.
38. CitationAllen, “Decorative Decorations,” 597.
39. I have examined the following issues of the paper which follow this structure: 6253, no. 41 (March 27, 1885), 6601, no. 43 (May 13, 1886), 6718, no. 44 (September 27, 1886) and 6728, no. 44 (October 8, 1886).
40. Citation[Anon], “Provoking War,” The Pall Mall Gazette 6253, no. 41 (March 27, Citation1885): 1.
41. Citation[Anon], “Provoking War,” The Pall Mall Gazette 6253, no. 41 (March 27, Citation1885): 1
42. Under John Morley's editorship, Allen moved forward in the paper until he was writing ‘turnovers’. A ‘turnover’ was the article following the header on the front page. CitationPeter Morton states that this had to be written in a style which would encourage the reader to ‘turnover’, The Busiest Man in England, 75.
43. Stokes, 150.
44. CitationAnon., “Sir Edwin Arnold's Last Volume,” Pall Mall Gazette 48, no. 7406 (December 11, 1888): 3.
45. CitationAnon., “The Poetry of the People,” Pall Mall Gazette 43, no. 6601 (May 13, Citation1886): 5.
46. CitationAnon., “A New Book on Dickens,” Pall Mall Gazette 45, no. 6876 (March 31, 1887): 5.
47. CitationG.H. Lewes quoted by Dames, 37.
48. Lewes, Principles of Success in Literature, 23.
49. Lewes, Principles of Success in Literature, 5.
50. CitationAnon., “A Ride Through Morocco,” Pall Mall Gazette 44, no. 6728 (October 8, Citation1886): 5.
51. Dames, 39.
52. CitationAnon., “Printing and Printers, Lecture at the Arts and Crafts,” Pall Mall Gazette 48, no. 7385 (November, 16): 5.
53. Citation“The Pall Mall Gazette,” The Sphinx, 67.
54. CitationAnon., “The Poet's Corner,” Pall Mall Gazette 44, no. 6718 (27 September, Citation1886): 5.
55. Whistler and Wilde's verbal combat was fought out in the pages of the periodical press and appears fully in CitationWhistler's The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (London: Heinemann, 1904), 135–65.
56. CitationWitt, “Blushings and Palings: The Body as Text in CitationWilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray,” 86.
57. CitationWitt, “Blushings and Palings: The Body as Text in CitationWilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray,”, 95.
58. CitationAgnes Atkinson describes word-painting as a ‘distinctly artistic faulty’ ‘influencing and being influenced by the arts plastic, pictorial, [and] dramatic’. “On Word-painting,” Portfolio, 206 and 211 (206–11).
59. Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 87.
60. Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 87
61. Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 87
62. “The Pall Mall Gazette,” The Sphinx, 67.
63. CitationAnon., “The Beauties of Bookbinding,” Pall Mall Gazette 48, no. 7391 (November 23, 1888): 3.
64. CitationAnon., “The Beauties of Bookbinding,” Pall Mall Gazette 48, no. 7391 (November 23, 1888): 3
65. CitationAnon., “The Beauties of Bookbinding,” Pall Mall Gazette 48, no. 7391 (November 23, 1888): 3
66. CitationFrankel, 115.
67. CitationAnon., “Ouida's New Novel,” Pall Mall Gazette 49, no. 7539 (May 17, 1889): 3.
68. CitationAnon., “The Poet's Corner,” Pall Mall Gazette 47, no.7128 (January 20, 1888): 5.
69. Frankel, 133.
70. Frankel, 134.
71. Frankel
72. CitationMatthews and Moody, eds, Judging a Book by its Cover, 67.
73. CitationAnon., “A Bevy of Poets,” Pall Mall Gazette 41, no. 6253 (March 27, 1885): 5.
74. CitationAnon., “Balzac in English,” Pall Mall Gazette 44, no. 6706 (September 18, 1886): 5.
75. CitationAnon., “The Poet's Corner,” Pall Mall Gazette, 48, no. 7385 (November 16, 1888): 5.
76. CitationAnon., “A New Book on Dickens,” 5.
77. Groves, J.D. “Judging Literacy Books by their Covers: House Styles, Ticknor and Fields and Literary Production”, in Reading Books, no. Essays on the Material Text and Literature in America, ed. CitationM. Moylan and L. Stiles, 76 (75–100).
78. CitationPrice, 12.
79. CitationPrice, 11.