The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde, and: The Oscar Wilde

Encyclopedia
Maguire, J. Robert.

Victorian Studies, Volume 42, Number 4, Summer 1999/2000,

pp. 715-717 (Review)

Published by Indiana University Press

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/vic/summary/v042/42.4maguire.html

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The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde, edited by Peter Raby; pp. xxii + 307. Cam-
bridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997, £37.50, £13.95 paper, $59.95,
$18.95 paper.

The Oscar Wilde Encyclopedia, by Karl Beckson; pp. xviii + 456. New York: AMS Press,
1998, $125.00.

Oscar Wilde’s devoted friends Robbie Ross and Reggie Turner, who were with him when
he died in November 1900, thought that his death, after a week of agony, was for the best,
considering how unhappy he was and the likelihood that he would become even more so
as time went on. Against the somber background of poverty, ill health, obscurity, and ne-
glect, how heartening it would have been for Wilde—to whom fame was the elixir of life—
had he, like his Faustian contemporary Enoch Soames, been vouchsafed an afternoon in
the Reading Room of the British Museum a hundred years in the future. Unlike poor
Soames, undone to find no evidence in the library catalogue that he had ever existed,
Wilde would have had the supreme consolation of discovering his own posthumous fame
in a bibliography of such prodigious size and unimagined scope in countless languages
as must have seemed even to Wilde an improbable and exotic dream. The two books un-
der review are further confirmation of what has long been recognized: the range of fresh
perspectives on Wilde is inexhaustible, and no estimate of his life and art can ever be
taken as the last word on this elusive genius.
The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde exhibits the scholarly authority for
which the series of which it is a part—the Cambridge Companions to Literature—has
come to be known. The essays in this collection examine Wilde’s multifaceted career as
poet, journalist, novelist, essayist, dramatist, and critic in an illuminating biographical
context provided by Merlin Holland, Regenia Gagnier, and Stephen Calloway. The phe-
nomenal resurgence of interest in Wilde in recent years attests to his remarkable contem-
porary relevance, not only as an innovative and popular writer but also as radical thinker,
moralist, visionary, and social critic, all of which is amply demonstrated in the fascinating
insights that make this collection absorbing reading. It is owing in substantial measure to
the kind of exemplary scholarship that characterizes these essays that, at the centenary of
his death, Wilde’s reputation as a cultural force (as he thought of himself) has never
stood higher. His dramatic works, for example, are here the subject of penetrating analy-
ses which bring to light aspects of the plays that persuasively account for the enduring
popularity of what, on the surface, has appeared to some critics to be frivolous social com-
mentary and a dated form of theater. Joseph Donohue points out that by 1909, when
Wilde’s reputation was at its lowest ebb, Salome (1893) had already appeared in eleven for-
eign translations; the Bodleian now holds forty-nine editions of this extraordinary work.
In a judicious assessment of Wilde’s biographers, “Biography and the art of ly-
ing,” Holland notes the proliferation of myths that have attached to Wilde’s life and con-
tinue to complicate the task of his biographers. Jerusha McCormack goes further in her
essay, “Wilde’s fiction(s),” with the dire prediction that “the myths surrounding Wilde will
outlast all the informative biographies ever written about him” (112). As if by way of illus-
trating the point, a singularly persistent misconception and source of confusion, so stub-
bornly and pervasively held as to have achieved the status of myth, makes an unexpected
appearance in Calloway’s excellent study, “Wilde and the Dandyism of the Senses.” Calloway

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describes the scandalously conducted sheriff’s sale of Wilde’s household possessions on

24 April 1895 as an outcome of his bankruptcy, the adjudication of which under the or-
derly procedures of the Bankruptcy Court was still four months in the future. While the
myths that have gathered about Wilde admittedly pose a problem for his biographers,
many will concur in Holland’s favorable estimate of Frank Harris, long considered a prin-
cipal fabricator of Wildean myths: “He may have been a braggart and occasionally a liar
but his life of Wilde is long overdue for re-evaluation” (6).
The Oscar Wilde Encyclopedia by Karl Beckson is a bountiful harvest gathered over
the course of many years by a distinguished scholar, author of several books on the nine-
ties, and a contributor to the Cambridge Companion. It is an impressive achievement and has
already taken its place among the small body of work—Richard Ellmann’s Oscar Wilde
(1987), Rupert Hart-Davis’s Letters of Oscar Wilde (1962) and Stuart Mason’s Bibliography of
Oscar Wilde (1914)—indispensable to the study of Wilde. As one might anticipate of a work
aimed at all-inclusive treatment of such a protean artist and larger-than-life personality, the
range of subjects and individuals is vast and the book is as rewarding for browsing as it is
useful for reference. Each entry is followed by a citation of sources, which will be of partic-
ular value to the researcher. Although numerous biographical entries are included, the
emphasis is on Wilde’s works, which are treated comprehensively with a great deal of fasci-
nating background information, generous quotation, bibliographic detail, and, where
known, the location of manuscripts. The double-column page format and ample type size
make for easy reading and, for the kind of frequent handling the book is likely to receive,
the publisher has provided a sturdy binding for this attractively produced volume.
If such a magisterial reference work may be said to have a shortcoming, it is that
there is not more of it. In view of the author’s intention to include biographical notices of
“persons important in [Wilde’s] life” (xi), one would like, for example, to see more per-
sons included who meet this criterion. Two notable absentees who unquestionably meet
it—both named on the funeral wreath at the time of Wilde’s death among the small group
of loyal friends “who had shown kindness to him during or after his imprisonment” (Letters
856)—are Arthur Clifton, co-trustee with Carlos Blacker of Constance Wilde’s marriage
settlement, and Rowland Strong. Strong was Wilde’s principal abettor in the tragic
breakup of his friendship with Blacker, one of Wilde’s oldest and most cherished friends,
during their deep entanglement in the Dreyfus affair—an episode in Wilde’s life that, in
view of the extent to which it clouded his final years, would seem to deserve fuller notice
than the passing mention it receives. Also absent from the Index is Ernest La Jeunesse,
companion and chronicler of Wilde’s last years, whose memoir, published in the Revue
Blanche two weeks after Wilde’s death, Robert Sherard considered to be “the most valuable
account of his last years which exists [. . .] a pure gem of literature” (Twenty Years in Paris
[1905] 438–39). A more surprising omission is the absence of a clear account of one of the
most critical and far-reaching events of Wilde’s prison years: the fatal misunderstanding
with his wife Constance over his future life interest in her marriage settlement, an asset in
his bankruptcy mystifyingly described in the entry on More Adey as “that is, interest de-
rived from an investment of funds” (1). The resulting quarrel put an end to the hopes of
husband and wife for a reconciliation, leading ultimately to their permanent estrange-
ment, an outcome neither of them wanted. Although sole responsibility for the debacle lay
with Adey, acting in opposition to Wilde’s specific instructions on an untenable suggestion
by Arthur Clifton which the latter himself soon abandoned, the full extent of Adey’s well-

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intentioned folly does not emerge from his biographical entry. In it, he is portrayed far
more benignly than in Wilde’s own withering judgment after surveying the wreckage left
in the wake of his disastrous stewardship: “He is incapable [. . .] of managing the domestic
affairs of a tom-tit in a hedge for a single afternoon. He is a stupid man” (Letters 548). Adey,
by his own admission, “extremely dislike[d] representing the common sense view of any
question” (draft of his letter endorsed “Copy to Miss Schuster, April 14, 96,” Clark Library)
and nowhere displayed this idiosyncratic bias with more calamitous consequences than in
his mishandling of Wilde’s affairs during the latter’s imprisonment. Inexplicably, the entry
on Adey credits him with urging Wilde to surrender his life interest to his wife Constance,
which in fact Wilde from the outset wished to do, but which was directly contrary to the
course of action Adey stubbornly pursued in Wilde’s name and without his knowledge.
The confusing reference in the Encyclopedia to Wilde’s life interest is, however, a rare lapse
in a work of monumental scope.
Weighing three pounds and containing 456 pages, the Encyclopedia is a hefty
volume and, at more than twenty-five cents a page, commands a hefty price. Nowhere
else, however, is such a compilation of widely scattered information about Oscar Wilde
and his work to be found in such readily accessible form, for which reason this well-
indexed reference may be justly regarded as indispensable to Wildean studies. It is diffi-
cult to look upon it in this light as anything but a bargain for anyone with more than a
passing interest in the subject. While the Cambridge Companion may not be indispensable
in the same sense, it will be found to be an essential text in the evolving reappraisal of the
life and work of Oscar Wilde. As such, and at half the price of the Encyclopedia, the none-
theless high-priced Companion may also claim to be a bargain.
J. Robert Maguire
Shoreham, Vermont

SUMMER 1999/2000