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J O S E P H B R I S T O W A Reuter telegram from Paris states that Oscar Wilde died there yesterday afternoon from meningitis. The melancholy end to a career which once promised so well is stated to have come in an obscure hotel of the Latin Quarter. Here the once brilliant man of letters was living, exiled from his country and from the society of his countrymen. The verdict that a jury passed upon his conduct at the Old Bailey in May 1895, destroyed for ever his reputation, and condemned him to ignoble obscurity for the remainder of his days. When he had served his sentence of two years’ imprisonment, he was broken in health as well as bankrupt in fame and fortune. Death has soon ended what must have been a life of wretchedness and unavailing regret. —Unsigned obituary, London Times, 1 December 1900 Just before the end of the nineteenth century, Oscar Wilde died in trying circumstances, as unsympathetic obituaries in the British press were prompt to note. To the London Times, Wilde’s demise from an infection of brain tissue at age forty-six did not come soon enough. How could a man who suffered such degradation continue a life that was anything other than shameful and remorseful ? How could this once-fêted author ever have stood again before the public with any measure of dignity? From this perspective, the attack of meningitis is portrayed as a blessing that put Wilde, once and for all, out of his misery. Yet if 1 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. this notice of Wilde’s death seems at best dismissive, it appears more favorable than the brief commentary that appeared a week later in another well-regarded publication, the Academy, which could not bring itself to mention Wilde’s identity . Here he figures only as“the unhappy man who died in Paris the other day.”₁ To be sure, the Academy concedes that, regardless of what we think of Wilde as an individual, it is “what he did in literature” that “remains in witness for or against him.”Such wording suggests that even when critics recognize that they must separate the quality of Wilde’s writings from his scandalous disgrace,his achievements will never escape the judgmental attitude that makes naming him impossible. At the time of Wilde’s decease, on 30 November 1900, the idea that he would soon become a legendary figure was for most commentators inconceivable. But the urgency with which a group of devotees salvaged his reputation quickly turned public attention on the injustice that had led to the incarceration, exile, and premature demise of an immensely talented writer.The restoration of Wilde’s standing, however, hardly went uncontested, even among the friends who were closely attached to him. The contending efforts among his loyal companions, ardent followers, and estranged acquaintances to recount the story of Wilde’s career were often hampered by bouts of infighting, which led in turn to plenty of mythmaking about the kind of man Wilde actually had been. On several awkward occasions in the 1910s, the closest of Wilde’s associates developed such animosity toward each other that they rushed into court praising and blaming a genius with whom all of them—whether emotionally or professionally—had been involved. Such squabbles ensured that modern audiences would never forget the scandal attached to Wilde’s much-maligned person and concentrate instead on the high quality of his work. Such publicity fascinated the public at a moment when Wilde’s writings had been translated into many languages. In 1905, even Wilde’s symbolist play Salomé —which the British censor had banned from public performance in June 1892— reemerged in Richard Strauss’s opera,which premiered to acclaim in the Dresden production and was transferred to Covent Garden, London, a year later. John Lane, who had issued several of Wilde’s volumes in the 1890s, promptly released a guide to Strauss’s opera, which alludes to the still-censored drama as “a remarkable tour de force.”² Try as it might, the British press, no matter how embarrassed by the thought of Wilde’s homosexuality, could not hush up his legacy. As numerous editions of his works began to circulate, Wilde’s stock rose so sharply...

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