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Abstract
This article focuses on the journalism of Oscar Wilde, and in particular a single review of a history of needlework, to explore the connections between British and Irish print media in the 1880s. By understanding the significance of the review, we can begin to see the overlapping networks of print in Ireland and Britain in the late-19th century. We also learn something about Wilde’s approach to writing about Ireland. While he may not have written directly about Ireland across his oeuvre, he does in this review demonstrate his interests in Irish cultural politics which were being discussed in Anglo-Irish print media at the time. It is through connections in print–the way Wilde’s review is part of broader, topical discourses about contemporary Ireland–that we come to understand Wilde’s subtle intervention in some of the most significant cultural and political questions of his day.
Notes
1 For a full discussion of Wilde the journalist, see Stokes and Turner, Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. See also Turner, ‘Journalism’.
2 For important discussions of Wilde and Ireland, see: Clayworth, “Revising a Recalcitrant Patriot”; Coakley, Oscar Wilde; Kibberd, Inventing Ireland; McCormack, Wilde the Irishman; McCormack, “Wilde’s Dublin”; Pine, The Thief of Reason.
3 For a full discussion of Wilde’s public discussion of Ireland during his American tour, see Wright and Kinsella, “Oscar Wilde, A Parnellite Home Ruler and Gladstonian Liberal”.
4 On Wilde’s journalism and Ireland, see Stokes and Turner, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, xxvi ff.
5 See Bristow, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, 406–408.
6 Reprinted in Stokes and Turner, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, 88.
7 For a discussion of the tensions between women’s paid labour and unpaid labour in the needlework industry, especially the convents, see O’Toole, “Exquisite Lace”.
8 Stokes and Turner, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, 88.
9 On the history of the South Kensington museums (later, the Victoria and Albert Museum), see Burton, Vision & Accident, esp. chapters 1–5.
10 See Stokes and Turner, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, 212–13.
11 For an excellent discussion which situates Keane’s article in relation to Wilde’s Irish interests as editor of Woman’s World, see: Strachan and Nally, Advertising, Literature, 167–69.
12 For example, two lectures by Cole delivered at the Royal Dublin Society, at the invitation of the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin, were published as pamphlets. See: Cole, Two Lectures.
13 See the Freeman’s Journal for the following dates: 15 May 1888; 27 July 1888; 17 November 1888. Interestingly, Freeman’s Journal was one of the small number of papers that reviewed Cole’s translation of Lefébure, linking the history explicitly to the revival of lace in Ireland; see 9 November 1888.
14 Ryan, Made in Cork, 19.
15 Helland, British and Irish Home Arts and Industries 1880–1914, 2.
16 Ibid., 5. See also Helland, chapter 2 for an excellent and full discussion of the Donegal Industrial Fund.
17 Helland, 31. On the use of Celtic designs in the Celtic Revival, see Edelstein, Imagining An Irish Past. Wilde was keenly aware of Celtic iconography and symbolism, as he demonstrates in a number of his reviews. See, for example, ‘Early Christian Art in Ireland,’ Pall Mall Gazette, 17 December 1887, 3, (reprinted in Stokes and Turner, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, 38–9) or his review of Yeats in ‘Three New Poets,’ Pall Mall Gazette, 12 July 1889, 3 (reprinted in Stokes and Turner, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, 234–7).
18 See Helland, British and Irish Home Arts and Industries 1880–1914, 50–1.
19 Ibid., 56.
20 Maltz, British Aestheticism, 33.
21 Ibid., 215–16.
22 Given the scarcity of reviews of Cole’s translation, it’s interesting to note that an anonymous review appeared in the pro-Irish Pall Mall Gazette, 26 September 1888, likely not by Wilde; see Stokes and Turner, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, 408.