Oscar Wilde’s Paris: Legends and Legacies chronicles Wilde’s lifelong relationship with the French capital, the city he called "the most wonderful city in the world," and the site of his rise to literary fame, self-imposed exile, and eventual death.
Focused on the 1880s to the 1940s, editors Colette Colligan and Gregory Mackie shed light on this vibrant, transnational chapter of Wilde’s life and legacy. Contributors document how his relationship with the city developed in literature, journalism, and the visual arts, as well as in the city’s famous cafés, bars, restaurants, hotels, and cemeteries.
This collection highlights three touchstones in the relationship between Wilde and Paris: his Parisian self-fashioning, the impact of the city’s cultural scene on his career, and his legacy’s absorption into the myth of Paris as a place of artistic and sexual freedom.
Whether Wilde is viewed as ambitious aesthete, Francophile flâneur, or disreputable expatriate, Oscar Wilde’s Paris tells the story of how one man’s life became intertwined with the cultural imagination of a city, and how that city, in turn, claimed him as its own.
Acknowledgments
List of Contributors
List of Illustrations
Introduction: The Romance of Wilde and the City of Light
Colette Colligan and Gregory Mackie
Part 1: Wilde City
Chapter One: Oscar Wilde and the "Artistic Capital of the World"
Nicholas Frankel
Chapter Two: "I am not really myself except in the midst of elegant crowds": The Role of Paris in Oscar Wilde’s Identity Formation
Paisley Mann
Part 2: Journalistic Advocacy
Chapter Three: How Parisian Journalists Changed Their Minds about the Wilde Scandal
Colette Colligan
Chapter Four: Oscar Wilde and Henry-D. Davray: Reviewing, Translating, and Publishing Wilde for the Mercure de France
Petra Dierkes
Part 3: Archive and Anecdote
Chapter Five: Disputed Memories: Oscar Wilde’s Deathbed at the Hôtel d’Alsace
Joseph Bristow
Chapter Six: Oscar Wilde’s French Fragments
Rebecca N. Mitchell
Part 4: Literary Influence and Appropriation
Chapter Seven: Oscar Wilde and Pierre Louÿs: Gestures of Literary Friendship from Inspiration to Translation
Clément Dessy and Stefano Evangelista
Chapter Eight: Oscar Wilde, Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen, and Cross-Channel Decadence in the Twentieth Century
Kristin Mahoney
Part 5: Legend and Legacy
Chapter Nine: Oscar Wilde’s Tomb: Silence and the Aesthetics of Queer Memorial
Ellen Crowell
Chapter Ten: Un Faux Parisien: Sylvestre Dorian and Oscar Wilde’s Letters to Sarah Bernhardt
Gregory Mackie
Bibliography
Index
Height:229
Width:152
Spine:25
Weight:1.00