Josephine M. Guy - Böcker

Volume IV of the Oxford English Texts Complete Works of Oscar Wilde is the first variorum edition of Wilde's major critical writing; it includes the critical essays which were re-published in book-form in his life-time - that is, those anthologised in Intentions and The Soul of Man - as well as his graduate essay usually known by the title The Rise of Historical Criticism, but which this volume titles Historical Criticism. The Introduction gives a detailed account of the composition of each of the essays: it gives a new explanation for the relationship between the 'The Decay of Lying' and 'Pen, Pencil, and Poison' (arguing that they are best understood as companion pieces); it provides the first concrete demonstration that Wilde did, on occasions, knowingly 'copy' his own work; and it reveals that substantial cuts were made to some of Wilde's essays (without his full consent) by the periodical editors with whom he worked. The edition also provides, for the first time, a full collation of the textual variants between the published versions of Wilde's essays (that is, both book and periodical), and all extant manuscripts; in addition it establishes a new, authoritative text for Historical Criticism, based on an examination of the original manuscript, which differs significantly from that printed by Robert Ross in his 1908 Collected Edition (and subsequently reprinted in the Collins Complete Works). The annotation to the edition reveals the full extent of Wilde's 'borrowings' both from his own work, and from other writers; it also reveals that much of Historical Criticism is in fact paraphrasing or translating well-known classical texts, and that the some of denseness of the argument is due to ellipses in Wilde's text that were disguised by earlier editors.

A materialist account of Wilde's career as a writer, Oscar Wilde's Profession contests three widely held assumptions about his success: that there is a clear distinction between his life as a journalist and his artistic celebrity; that he was an aesthetic 'purist' in his attitude towards his own books; and that his career was driven by an oppositional sexual or nationalist politics. The authors bring together evidence from the publishing trade, from Wilde's contracts and correspondence with publishers, and from documentation about his earnings (particularly the plays) to show that he always worked for money, but that he achieved far less financial success than is usually thought. Far from subverting the nascent consumerism of his time, he was thoroughly immersed in its values--in the commodification of culture in which books became product. At the same time, Oscar Wilde's Profession provides a uniquely detailed account of Wilde's processes of composition, springing from the re-examination of his writing practice currently being undertaken in the Oxford English Texts edition of his complete work: it surveys his writing practices across the whole of the oeuvre, and radically reinterprets the significance of his revision and 'plagiarism'.

Volume IX in the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde brings together Wilde's first performed play, Vera; or, The Nihilist, and his first West End success, Lady Windermere's Fan. Two texts are provided for each play: a reconstruction of the first performance text of each work, based on marked-up scripts that were used during rehearsals, and which are collated in the Textual Notes with all other extant versions (including manuscripts, typescripts, and where relevant, authoritative acting editions); as well as, for Vera, a complete transcription of an early manuscript and manuscript fragment, and for Lady Windermere's Fan, a reproduction of the familiar 1893 Bodley Head 'reading text' of the play. Also provided are two lengthy Introductions to the plays describing the history of their composition, staging, reception and (where relevant) publication, and in which special attention is given to Wilde's relationships with the actor-managers who starred in and produced these works: Marie Prescott and George Alexander. Commentaries identify references, allusions, and possible source materials Wilde drew upon. A notable feature of the edition in this respect is the attention given to a range of contemporary Nihilist-themed works, fictional and non-fictional, to which Vera is compared, as well as to the intricate codes of contemporary etiquette, upon which much of the humour of Lady Windermere's Fan is reliant.

This book describes various accounts of the Victorian social-problem novel, examining their strengths and limitations in the light of the historiographical assumptions which underlie them. An alternative historical account is offered, which focuses on the novels' intellectual milieu - specifically on mid-Victorian concepts of 'the social' and of what was understood by the term 'social problem'. In detailed readings of individual works, the book argues that an appreciation of these concepts permits new ways of understanding the contradictions identified in these works together with their apparently 'conservative' politics.

The current debate about the nature of English studies has questioned the status of English as a discipline. In this 1993 book, Josephine Guy and Ian Small set this so-called 'crisis in English' within the larger context of disciplinary knowledge. They examine the teaching of English and literary studies in the United States and Britain, and argue that the explicit attempt by some radical critics on both sides of the Atlantic to politicise the discipline has profound consequences for the nature of English studies. They describe the state of disciplinary knowledge, together with its social and philosophical preconditions; they analyse proposals for reform; and they discuss the ways in which these proposed reforms would affect the three main practices of the discipline - literary criticism, literary history and text-editing. In the process they demystify issues and arguments which have often in the past been obscured by jargon and polemic.

The current debate about the nature of English studies has questioned the status of English as a discipline. In this 1993 book, Josephine Guy and Ian Small set this so-called 'crisis in English' within the larger context of disciplinary knowledge. They examine the teaching of English and literary studies in the United States and Britain, and argue that the explicit attempt by some radical critics on both sides of the Atlantic to politicise the discipline has profound consequences for the nature of English studies. They describe the state of disciplinary knowledge, together with its social and philosophical preconditions; they analyse proposals for reform; and they discuss the ways in which these proposed reforms would affect the three main practices of the discipline - literary criticism, literary history and text-editing. In the process they demystify issues and arguments which have often in the past been obscured by jargon and polemic.

Academics, researchers, postgraduates, upper level undergraduates, educated general readers in Fin de Siecle, Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Late Victorian Literature & Culture, Decadence, The New Woman Literature, Aestheticism, Fantastic Fiction, The Visual Arts.