Oscar Wilde's Profession: Writing and the Culture Industry in the Late Nineteenth Century

by Josephine M. Guy, Ian Small

Overview

A materialist account of Wilde's writing career, based on publishing contracts and other documentation as well as detailed evidence of how he composed, this book argues that Wilde was not driven by an oppositional politics, nor was he an aesthetic "purist." Rather, he was thoroughly immersed in the contemporary "commodification of culture" in which books became product. This study surveys his writing practices across the whole of the oeuvre, and radically reinterprets the significance of his revision and "plagiarism."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198187288
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/01/2001
Pages:	322
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

University of Nottingham

University of Birmingham

Table of Contents

Wilde the writerThe journalist'Of making many books'The dramatistThe Bodley HeadPost-prison and posthumous worksThe writer at workAppendix: Wilde's booksSelect BibliographyIndex

Editorial Reviews

". Meticulous study of publishing and production history. Guy and Small stress in underlying continuity of his commercial concerns, interpreting his "apparent flitting from one genre to another" as "an attempt to explore or 'keep up' with rapidly changing market conditions. Guy and Small's meticulous examination of "the material circumstances of (Wilde's) writing career" makes their book invaluable for any scholar interested in Wilde's work and it's place in late Victorian literary culture."— The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies

From the Publisher