Wilde in the Bodleian, 1878-1881

Wilde in the Bodleian, 1878-1881 Philip E. Smith π University of Pittsburgh Greats is the only fine school at Oxford, the only sphere of thought where one can be; simultaneously, brilliant and unreasonable, speculative and well-informed, creative as well as critical, and write with all the passion of youth about the truths which belong to the august serenity of old age. —Oscar Wilde MY WORK on Oscar Wilde's use of the Bodleian was prompted by questions raised in research for the edition and commentary on Wilde's Oxford notebooks.2 After Michael Helfand and I established and published the contexts and sources for most of the entries in the two notebooks , I believed that there might be more to learn about Wilde's years at Oxford. My investigation of the Bodleian Library Papers Entry Books revealed new information about Wilde's requests for journals and a book he presumably consulted to prepare for the "Greats" examination in 1878, which was the culmination of his four-year Literae Humaniores program at Oxford. I also discovered records of a variety of other books he requested on several visits in the three years following his completion of his degree.3 A crucial clue for this research came during the work on the notebooks while I was looking into the intellectual influence of Pater on Wilde. Struck by Billie Andrew Inman's extensive findings about Pater's Oxford borrowings from several libraries, I resolved to investigate Wilde's borrowings in the same way4 Though Inman found records of Pater's borrowings when he was both an undergraduate and a fellow extending over many years and several libraries, I found fewer records for Wilde's use of libraries, probably because his college library at Magdalen had open shelves and no records of borrowings were kept; there were, likewise, no records of Wilde's borrowing from the Taylor Institution Library.5 However, in my search through the extant entry books of 279 ELT 46 : 3 2003 the Bodleian for 1874-1881,1 found several entries which reveal Wilde's requests to inspect books and periodicals.6 Wilde's visits to the Bodleian occurred between March 1878 and December 1881; the entry books show that he filed requests for a total of ten bound volumes of periodicals and six books as well as two other unidentified items. I have inspected all the volumes requested save the two which could not be located under their nineteenth-century shelf marks. These two are identifiable only by likely subject in the shelving system: law and theological pamphlets, respectively. In regard to the requests I confirmed and inspected, some, I suggest, were read in support of his studies for the final Honour Schools examination in Literae Humaniores (June 1878). Several of the periodicals contain reviews of the texts recommended in the official announcements, students' accounts, and preparatory handbooks regarding "Mods" and "Greats." Following the conferral of his B.A. degree in November 1878 but before his departure for his American tour in late 1881, Wilde retained the privilege of using books from the Bodleian and returned to the library for this purpose on several occasions. I will comment on Wilde's borrowings chronologically within a condensed biographical framework in order to present my conclusions and suggestions about their significance. Preparing for the "Greats" Examination: The Bad Boy Does Well in the End In October 1874, at the age of 20, Wilde matriculated to Magdalen College, Oxford having already proven himself an accomplished performer on university examinations in Ireland. For example, at Trinity College, Dublin in 1873 he won one of ten Fellowship Scholarships awarded on the basis of a competitive examination. In February 1874, during his third year at Trinity, Wilde won the Berkeley Gold Medal in Greek for the excellence of his examination on Johann Meineke's The Fragments of the Greek Comic Poets.1 He gained entrance and financial aid to attend Magdalen College, Oxford by winning one of two Classical Demyships awarded after the examination in June 1874. The handwritten note at the head of the examination paper preserved at the Bodleian puts his name above that of the second winner, G. T. Atkinson.8 The...