Grandson talks about Oscar Wilde’s long road to fame

Merlin Holland

4:14 p.m., March 9, 2005--Oscar Wilde was imprisoned and suffered an early death because of his homosexuality, but he did not become a literary legend until decades after his death, status that has made him a household name but still evokes mixed reaction, his grandson, Merlin Holland, said at UD on Friday, March 4.

“The parents of middle-class England--I’m sure it happens in America, too--read his stories to their children and flock to see his plays [and] tut-tut or shake their heads openly over his scandal, which couldn’t be openly discussed 20 years ago,” Holland said. “Yet, many of them still feel deeply uncomfortable about his homosexuality.”

Holland’s lecture, “Confounding the Critics, Surviving the Scandal: The Remarkable Reputation of Oscar Wilde,” marked the opening of the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, one of the country’s premier private gatherings of British literature and art of the period 1850 to 1900.

The lecture was derived in part from Holland’s current work, tentatively titled After Oscar, which reflects on what happened to Wilde in the 20th Century at the hands of family, editors, critics, biographers, collectors and squabbling surviving friends in the British literary world.

Holland said Wilde, who died in 1900 at the age of 46, may have been used as a scapegoat to divert attention from homosexual scandals among senior public figures. He was involved in three trials during his life and sent to prison for two years with hard labor. Years after his death, his name featured prominently in a dozen trials.

“For two generations after his death, it was fashionable to dismiss him as something of a first-rate funnyman struggling to rise to the second division of literary excellence,” Holland said. “It was convenient to forget his essays and his criticism, which amount to more than a third of his published works, but which didn’t fit into the mold, which had been made for him. It is now that we need to remind ourselves that despite the public image, which he was so fond of projecting of himself, that he was a man deeply interested in the social issues of his day.”

After World War II, Wilde’s plays enjoyed a major revival, but his descendants, including Holland’s family, were often scorned by the public because of their relationship to Wilde. It was not until 1967 that England repealed the law against homosexuality, Holland said.

The fact that the stigma still lingers was evident in England in 2000, he said, when he found it impossible to raise sponsorship money for a British Library exhibition to celebrate Wilde’s centenary. In 1999, Holland faced similar hurdles while trying to raise money for a monument in Wilde’s honor in London.

“Today, there is scarcely an adult unfamiliar with his name, although too many know him through gossip and hearsay and inaccurate scandal-mongering,” Holland said. “The modern gay community holds him up as a martyr, and the militant wing accuses him of setting back the cause by 70 years by not speaking out more forcefully.”

Holland spoke to an audience of more than 200 academics, students, Library Associates and book dealers from across the country. The lecture was sponsored by the offices of the President, the Provost, and the Director of Libraries at UD.

A journalist and author, Holland has spent 20 years researching the life of his grandfather. The result has been The Wilde Album (1997), based on family photographs and rare printed material; Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess: The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde (2003), an edition of the 1895 court transcripts; and The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, a definitive collection, co-edited with Sir Rupert Hart-Davis and published in 2000.

The Mark Samuels Lasner Collection is associated with the Special Collections Department of the University of Delaware Library, but is privately owned. The collection, housed in the Morris Library, focuses on British literature and art of the period 1850 to 1900, with an emphasis on the Pre-Raphaelites and on the writers and illustrators of the 1890s. Its holdings comprise 2,500 first and other editions (including many signed and assocation copies), manuscripts, letters, works on paper and ephemera.

“It is an exceptional collection, a world class collection, so lovingly and devotedly built by its curator, Mark Samuels Lasner, who now holds the title at the University of Delaware senior research fellow,” Susan Brynteson, May Morris Director of Libraries, said in her welcoming remarks.

Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women’s Studies and Professor of Humanities, whose new book, Beyond Oscar Wilde, has just been accepted for publication by the University of Delaware Press, introduced Samuels Lasner, who received a standing ovation after his brief remarks.

“If I am greatly saddened that the collection is no longer at home, its new quarters, safe and secure, provides wonderful access to scholars and students alike,” Samuels Lasner said. “This is a collection that is meant to be used, not hidden away. It is my hope that the collection’s presence will encourage interest here and perhaps even elsewhere, in Victorian literature, in Victorian art, in print culture and in printing and the book arts.”

For more information about the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, visit [www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/msl/index.htm].

Article by Martin Mbugua
Photos by Kathy F. Atkinson

E-mail this article

To learn how to subscribe to UDaily, click here.