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A Critic in Pall Mall: Exploring the Intersection of Art, Literature, and Society in Oscar Wilde's Critiques
"A Critic in Pall Mall" is not a work by Oscar Wilde. Instead, it is a collection of essays and reviews written by Oscar Wilde that was published in 1885 under the title "The Critic As Artist." This collection includes two "The Critic As With Some Remarks on the Importance of Doing Nothing" and "The Decay of An Observation." In "The Critic As Artist," Wilde explores the role of the critic and the artist in society, arguing that the critic plays an essential role in shaping public opinion about art. He discusses the importance of individualism, aesthetics, and the idea that the critic's subjective response to art is as valuable as objective analysis. In "The Decay of Lying," Wilde satirically examines the relationship between art and reality. He argues that life imitates art far more than art imitates life, advocating for the value of artistic expression and imagination over strict adherence to reality. Both essays are known for their wit, humor, and paradoxical statements, which are characteristic of Wilde's writing style. These essays are considered significant contributions to the fields of literary criticism and aesthetics.
142 pages, Paperback
First published November 3, 2007
About the author
Oscar Wilde
5,996 books39.7k followersOscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.
Wilde tried his hand at various literary activities: he wrote a play, published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on "The English Renaissance" in art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he lectured on his American travels and wrote reviews for various periodicals. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Wilde returned to drama, writing Salome (1891) in French while in Paris, but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Undiscouraged, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.
At the height of his fame and success, while An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) were still being performed in London, Wilde issued a civil writ against John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel hearings unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and criminal prosecution for gross indecency with other males. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and so a retrial was ordered. In the second trial Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his last year in prison he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in abridged form in 1905), a long letter that discusses his spiritual journey through his trials and is a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On the day of his release, he caught the overnight steamer to France, never to return to Britain or Ireland. In France and Italy, he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.
Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.
Wilde tried his hand at various literary activities: he wrote a play, published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on "The English Renaissance" in art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he lectured on his American travels and wrote reviews for various periodicals. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Wilde returned to drama, writing Salome (1891) in French while in Paris, but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Undiscouraged, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.
At the height of his fame and success, while An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) were still being performed in London, Wilde issued a civil writ against John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel hearings unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and criminal prosecution for gross indecency with other males. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and so a retrial was ordered. In the second trial Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his last year in prison he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in abridged form in 1905), a long letter that discusses his spiritual journey through his trials and is a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On the day of his release, he caught the overnight steamer to France, never to return to Britain or Ireland. In France and Italy, he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 28, 2024
In here we find Wilde as critic, the middle stage of his artistic development. At first in his life, he was a scholar. He then tired of pedantry and debuted in society, and had to refine his learning in such a way that it could be digested by the public. His journalism is really very interesting. He has not the flippancy of later life, nor the pedantry of younger days. He was making during this time a middle way for himself. I enjoyed much of this. Here a piece he discussed about a man, Wilfred Blunt, and the verse he wrote while imprisoned. Wilde would later write beautiful verse from prison.
“Prison has had an admirable effect on Mr. Wilfrid Blunt as a poet. The Love Sonnets of Proteus, in spite of their
clever Musset-like modernities and their swift brilliant wit,
were but affected or fantastic at best. They were simply
the records of passing moods and moments, of which some were sad and others sweet, and not a few shameful. Their subject was not of high or serious import. They contained much that was wilful and weak. In Vinculis, upon the other hand, is a book that stirs one by its fine sincerity of purpose, its lofty and impassioned thought, its depth and ardour of intense feeling. ‘Imprisonment,’ says Mr. Blunt in his preface, ‘is a reality of discipline most useful to
the modern soul, lapped as it is in physical sloth and
self-indulgence. Like a sickness or a spiritual retreat it
purifies and ennobles; and the soul emerges from it stronger and more self-contained.’ To him, certainly, it has been a mode of purification. The opening sonnets, composed in the bleak cell of Galway Gaol, and written down on the flyleaves of the prisoner’s prayer-book, are full of things nobly conceived and nobly uttered, and show that though Mr. Balfour may enforce ‘plain living’ by his prison regulations, he cannot prevent ‘high thinking’ or in any way limit or constrain the freedom of a man’s soul. They are, of course, intensely personal in expression. ”
Wilde would later reflect that his soul had not been ruined by prison, but it had been entirely crushed.
“Prison has had an admirable effect on Mr. Wilfrid Blunt as a poet. The Love Sonnets of Proteus, in spite of their
clever Musset-like modernities and their swift brilliant wit,
were but affected or fantastic at best. They were simply
the records of passing moods and moments, of which some were sad and others sweet, and not a few shameful. Their subject was not of high or serious import. They contained much that was wilful and weak. In Vinculis, upon the other hand, is a book that stirs one by its fine sincerity of purpose, its lofty and impassioned thought, its depth and ardour of intense feeling. ‘Imprisonment,’ says Mr. Blunt in his preface, ‘is a reality of discipline most useful to
the modern soul, lapped as it is in physical sloth and
self-indulgence. Like a sickness or a spiritual retreat it
purifies and ennobles; and the soul emerges from it stronger and more self-contained.’ To him, certainly, it has been a mode of purification. The opening sonnets, composed in the bleak cell of Galway Gaol, and written down on the flyleaves of the prisoner’s prayer-book, are full of things nobly conceived and nobly uttered, and show that though Mr. Balfour may enforce ‘plain living’ by his prison regulations, he cannot prevent ‘high thinking’ or in any way limit or constrain the freedom of a man’s soul. They are, of course, intensely personal in expression. ”
Wilde would later reflect that his soul had not been ruined by prison, but it had been entirely crushed.
November 26, 2021
If you wondered what things concerned and interested Oscar Wilde, this is a great place to investigate. Oscar's care and concern for language, writing, and poetry are on full display. A delightful and unexpected book of treats. Oscar Wilde reveals himself here. Fascinating. Some of the essays seemed to drag a bit towards the end of the book- the quotations from the book reviewed were too long.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews