The reception of William Harrison Ainsworth’s novel, Jack Sheppard (1839-1840), was contemporaneously deemed a mania and has been described by critics today as a moral panic over the influence of fiction. Several adaptations of Ainsworth’s novel across media ambiguously depict Jack’s hanging, and the adaptations that most clearly show his survival occur in those versions that are least legally defensible and most clearly targeted toward the labouring classes. In this essay, I analyse Buckstone and Greenwood’s melodramas at the Adelphi and Sadler’s Wells, respectively, in autumn 1839; two penny press novelisations of Jack Sheppard published in 1839 and 1840; and an anonymous melodrama staged at the City of London Theatre in 1845, which was shut down due to violating the licensing ban on Jack Sheppard titles. From contemporary accounts of the mania, I argue that audience members treated historical and fictional accounts of Jack as describing the same entity, which created the space for specifying new facts and thus claiming new meaning. I therefore see Jack Sheppard as a transmedia character. For the labouring classes, claiming new meaning sometimes inhered in Jack’s defiance of capital punishment. This transmedial extension of Ainsworth’s character by working-class audiences in the penny press and cheap theatre pointed to the inadequacies of Victorian copyright law to protect the creative property of originating authors across media, and thus disturbed Victorian middle and upper-class literary critics because they saw the lower class’s celebration of a criminal as threatening to undermine their social order. Using the concept of transmedia in this period allows us to see how enthusiastic audience members in the working classes created what I term character complexity as they built a palimpsest out of the panoply of cross-media character representations. This transmedia character complexity matters because it is an avenue for oppressed communities to reclaim their dignity through narrative meaning-making.
威廉·哈里森·安斯沃思(William Harrison Ainsworth)的小说《杰克·谢泼德》(Jack Sheppard,1839-1840)在当时被认为是一种狂热,今天的评论家将其描述为对小说影响的道德恐慌。媒体对安斯沃思小说的几部改编作品都模糊地描述了杰克被绞死的情况,而最清楚地表明他幸存的改编作品出现在那些法律上最不可辩护、最明显针对工人阶级的版本中。在这篇文章中,我分析了巴克斯通和格林伍德分别于1839年秋在阿德尔菲和萨德勒威尔斯上演的情节剧;1839年和1840年出版的杰克·谢泼德的两部小说;以及1845年在伦敦市剧院上演的一部匿名情节剧,该剧因违反杰克·谢泼德电影的许可禁令而停播。从当代对狂热的描述来看,我认为观众将杰克的历史和虚构描述视为对同一实体的描述,这为指定新的事实创造了空间,从而声称了新的意义。因此,我认为杰克·谢泼德是一个跨媒体角色。对于工人阶级来说,声称新的意义有时源于杰克对死刑的蔑视。在廉价媒体和廉价剧院中,工人阶级观众对安斯沃思的角色进行了跨国界的延伸,这表明维多利亚州版权法在保护媒体原创作者的创作财产方面存在不足,因此,维多利亚时代的中上层文学评论家感到不安,因为他们认为下层阶级对罪犯的庆祝有可能破坏他们的社会秩序。在这一时期使用跨媒体的概念,可以让我们看到工人阶级中热情的观众是如何创造出我所说的角色复杂性的,因为他们从一系列跨媒体的角色表征中构建了一个重写本。这种跨媒体角色的复杂性很重要,因为它是受压迫社区通过叙事意义创造来重获尊严的途径。
{"title":"Class and Complex Transmedia Character in the Early Victorian Period: Jack Sheppard (1839-40)","authors":"Erica Haugtvedt","doi":"10.46911/oyym7051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46911/oyym7051","url":null,"abstract":"The reception of William Harrison Ainsworth’s novel, Jack Sheppard (1839-1840), was contemporaneously deemed a mania and has been described by critics today as a moral panic over the influence of fiction. Several adaptations of Ainsworth’s novel across media ambiguously depict Jack’s hanging, and the adaptations that most clearly show his survival occur in those versions that are least legally defensible and most clearly targeted toward the labouring classes. In this essay, I analyse Buckstone and Greenwood’s melodramas at the Adelphi and Sadler’s Wells, respectively, in autumn 1839; two penny press novelisations of Jack Sheppard published in 1839 and 1840; and an anonymous melodrama staged at the City of London Theatre in 1845, which was shut down due to violating the licensing ban on Jack Sheppard titles. From contemporary accounts of the mania, I argue that audience members treated historical and fictional accounts of Jack as describing the same entity, which created the space for specifying new facts and thus claiming new meaning. I therefore see Jack Sheppard as a transmedia character. For the labouring classes, claiming new meaning sometimes inhered in Jack’s defiance of capital punishment. This transmedial extension of Ainsworth’s character by working-class audiences in the penny press and cheap theatre pointed to the inadequacies of Victorian copyright law to protect the creative property of originating authors across media, and thus disturbed Victorian middle and upper-class literary critics because they saw the lower class’s celebration of a criminal as threatening to undermine their social order. Using the concept of transmedia in this period allows us to see how enthusiastic audience members in the working classes created what I term character complexity as they built a palimpsest out of the panoply of cross-media character representations. This transmedia character complexity matters because it is an avenue for oppressed communities to reclaim their dignity through narrative meaning-making.","PeriodicalId":34865,"journal":{"name":"Victorian Popular Fictions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45199914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The introduction to this special issue of the Victorian Popular Fictions Journal, “Unintended Authors,” argues that Victorian popular fictions crucially relied on incoherently regulated global artistic markets that made bargain-basement grabbing and reselling comme il faut. The absence of clear and uniform copyright statutes, case law, and trade practices across national, colonial, linguistic, and generic borders surprisingly did not obstruct nineteenth-century authorship; rather these conditions did the work of cultivating an extraordinary proliferation of scrappy innovators creatively reusing antecedents. A cast of rogue publishers, theatrical adaptors, and proto brand managers take centre stage here in an effort to recognize the collaborative, appropriative, and reiterative dimensions of nineteenth-century fictional entertainment.
{"title":"Unintended Authors: Piracy, Plagiarism and Property in Victorian Popular Culture","authors":"Monica Cohen","doi":"10.46911/amtw8511","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46911/amtw8511","url":null,"abstract":"The introduction to this special issue of the Victorian Popular Fictions Journal, “Unintended Authors,” argues that Victorian popular fictions crucially relied on incoherently regulated global artistic markets that made bargain-basement grabbing and reselling comme il faut. The absence of clear and uniform copyright statutes, case law, and trade practices across national, colonial, linguistic, and generic borders surprisingly did not obstruct nineteenth-century authorship; rather these conditions did the work of cultivating an extraordinary proliferation of scrappy innovators creatively reusing antecedents. A cast of rogue publishers, theatrical adaptors, and proto brand managers take centre stage here in an effort to recognize the collaborative, appropriative, and reiterative dimensions of nineteenth-century fictional entertainment.","PeriodicalId":34865,"journal":{"name":"Victorian Popular Fictions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45771179","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines interclass strategies to bring about reform in mid-nineteenth century England. It specifically explores the way the Ten Hours’ Advocate, a paper written for the working classes, looked to present itself as a middle-class periodical in order to further the argument for factory reform. In reproducing fiction filched from middle-class periodicals, the Advocate performed its argument for the Factory Bill: that the Bill would ease social tensions, dissipate the Chartist or radical threat, and ensure a “return” to traditional gender roles. The appropriated fiction is mild, rather bland; the non-fictional argument for reform is direct and unapologetic. That the Advocate was opportunistic in the way it made the case for reform is an example of the advantages provided to reformers by the absence of strict copyright laws and by Victorian periodical culture in general. But it also contextualises the debate over the family-wage argument and the working-class role in hardening the Victorian sexual division of labour.
{"title":"Women and Children First: Appropriated Fiction in the Ten Hours’ Advocate","authors":"Rob Breton","doi":"10.46911/fsmi1264","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46911/fsmi1264","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines interclass strategies to bring about reform in mid-nineteenth century England. It specifically explores the way the Ten Hours’ Advocate, a paper written for the working classes, looked to present itself as a middle-class periodical in order to further the argument for factory reform. In reproducing fiction filched from middle-class periodicals, the Advocate performed its argument for the Factory Bill: that the Bill would ease social tensions, dissipate the Chartist or radical threat, and ensure a “return” to traditional gender roles. The appropriated fiction is mild, rather bland; the non-fictional argument for reform is direct and unapologetic. That the Advocate was opportunistic in the way it made the case for reform is an example of the advantages provided to reformers by the absence of strict copyright laws and by Victorian periodical culture in general. But it also contextualises the debate over the family-wage argument and the working-class role in hardening the Victorian sexual division of labour.","PeriodicalId":34865,"journal":{"name":"Victorian Popular Fictions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41583648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Fanny Fern (real name Sara Payson Willis Parton) was one of the most profitable American columnists and novelists of the mid-nineteenth century. Fern sustained her celebrity status largely through unauthorised reprints of her articles in American and British papers. Consequently, her public image was for the most part constructed through those reprinted articles, which were usually framed by speculations about her private life. This article examines the implications and limitations of Fern’s efforts to stabilise the dissemination of her public image in periodicals by using the relatively more stable form of the book. As a celebrity, she had limited control over the way she was publicly represented. As a woman in the public sphere, she was particularly vulnerable to slander and libel. The circulation of a spurious biography entitled The Life and Beauties of Fanny Fern (1855), alongside her sanctioned autobiographical novel Ruth Hall, profited from her literary brand while simultaneously undermining it. Examining how these competing narratives about Fern’s private life – one fictionalised, one unauthorised – shaped her literary reputation at home and in England, this paper argues that textual representations as well as material market choices, including book bindings and advertising techniques, shaped authorship in the increasingly commercialised transatlantic literary market of the mid-century in ways that both benefited and imperilled the female writer.
{"title":"“A Nondescript Monster”: Fanny Fern in Transatlantic Print Culture","authors":"Mashael Alhammad","doi":"10.46911/ovwz1342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46911/ovwz1342","url":null,"abstract":"Fanny Fern (real name Sara Payson Willis Parton) was one of the most profitable American columnists and novelists of the mid-nineteenth century. Fern sustained her celebrity status largely through unauthorised reprints of her articles in American and British papers. Consequently, her public image was for the most part constructed through those reprinted articles, which were usually framed by speculations about her private life. This article examines the implications and limitations of Fern’s efforts to stabilise the dissemination of her public image in periodicals by using the relatively more stable form of the book. As a celebrity, she had limited control over the way she was publicly represented. As a woman in the public sphere, she was particularly vulnerable to slander and libel. The circulation of a spurious biography entitled The Life and Beauties of Fanny Fern (1855), alongside her sanctioned autobiographical novel Ruth Hall, profited from her literary brand while simultaneously undermining it. Examining how these competing narratives about Fern’s private life – one fictionalised, one unauthorised – shaped her literary reputation at home and in England, this paper argues that textual representations as well as material market choices, including book bindings and advertising techniques, shaped authorship in the increasingly commercialised transatlantic literary market of the mid-century in ways that both benefited and imperilled the female writer.","PeriodicalId":34865,"journal":{"name":"Victorian Popular Fictions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44586981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ann Radcliffe’s novels were extremely popular in early nineteenth-century Russia. Publication of her work in Russian translation propelled the so-called gothic wave of 1800-10. Yet, many of the works Radcliffe was known for in Russia were not written by her; rather, they were works by others that were attributed to Radcliffe. This article traces the publication and translation histories of Radcliffiana on the Russian book market of 1800-20. Building on JoEllen DeLucia’s concept of a “corporate Radcliffe” in the anglophone world, this article proposes a Russian corporate Radcliffe. Identifying, classifying, and analysing the provenance of Russian corporate Radcliffe works reveals insight into the transnational circulation of texts and the role of copyright law within it, the nature of the early nineteenth-century Russian book market, the rise of popular reading and advertising in Russia, and the gendered nature of critical discourse at this time. The Russian corporate Radcliffe assures the legacy and influence of Radcliffe in later Russian literature and culture, although a Radcliffe that represents much more than just the English author. Exploring the Russian corporate Radcliffe expands our understanding of early nineteenth-century Russian literary history through specific case studies that demonstrate the significant role played by both women writers and translation, an aspect of this history that is often overlooked.
{"title":"Ghost Writers: Radcliffiana and the Russian Gothic Wave","authors":"Katherine Bowers","doi":"10.46911/tvct9530","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46911/tvct9530","url":null,"abstract":"Ann Radcliffe’s novels were extremely popular in early nineteenth-century Russia. Publication of her work in Russian translation propelled the so-called gothic wave of 1800-10. Yet, many of the works Radcliffe was known for in Russia were not written by her; rather, they were works by others that were attributed to Radcliffe. This article traces the publication and translation histories of Radcliffiana on the Russian book market of 1800-20. Building on JoEllen DeLucia’s concept of a “corporate Radcliffe” in the anglophone world, this article proposes a Russian corporate Radcliffe. Identifying, classifying, and analysing the provenance of Russian corporate Radcliffe works reveals insight into the transnational circulation of texts and the role of copyright law within it, the nature of the early nineteenth-century Russian book market, the rise of popular reading and advertising in Russia, and the gendered nature of critical discourse at this time. The Russian corporate Radcliffe assures the legacy and influence of Radcliffe in later Russian literature and culture, although a Radcliffe that represents much more than just the English author. Exploring the Russian corporate Radcliffe expands our understanding of early nineteenth-century Russian literary history through specific case studies that demonstrate the significant role played by both women writers and translation, an aspect of this history that is often overlooked.","PeriodicalId":34865,"journal":{"name":"Victorian Popular Fictions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47631728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pirating novels for the stage was a staple of the Victorian theatre. There were many theatrical piracies of Bleak House in the second half of the period, but they all share a common feature: pirates had to decide how to reshape the narrative for audience consumption since the whole of this sprawling novel was impossible to stage. Thus fidelity to the original text was out of the question. This essay examines two Bleak House adaptations, an early and largely forgotten version and a later version that gained a global reputation. It considers the range of challenges pirates faced when adapting Bleak House as well as how the narrative is adapted to audience expectations across time and genre in the late Victorian period so that, out of the novel’s multivocality, Jo emerges as the centre of the story.
{"title":"Stage Piracy in Victorian Britain: Bleak House Adaptations","authors":"J. Smith","doi":"10.46911/abep5540","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46911/abep5540","url":null,"abstract":"Pirating novels for the stage was a staple of the Victorian theatre. There were many theatrical piracies of Bleak House in the second half of the period, but they all share a common feature: pirates had to decide how to reshape the narrative for audience consumption since the whole of this sprawling novel was impossible to stage. Thus fidelity to the original text was out of the question. This essay examines two Bleak House adaptations, an early and largely forgotten version and a later version that gained a global reputation. It considers the range of challenges pirates faced when adapting Bleak House as well as how the narrative is adapted to audience expectations across time and genre in the late Victorian period so that, out of the novel’s multivocality, Jo emerges as the centre of the story.","PeriodicalId":34865,"journal":{"name":"Victorian Popular Fictions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44670259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In locating Wilkie Collins’s novel Armadale (1866) in the context of its two subsequent dramatic versions, this article considers how the Victorian culture industry contended with an aggressively expanding market economy. It positions Collins’s work amid an ongoing Victorian debate that was especially prevalent in literary and dramatic periodicals concerning the bifurcated development of English drama and novels. Highlighting how Collins flexibly adapted his writing for the stage in the face of legal, commercial, and artistic pressures strengthens emerging links between the ostensibly discrete fields of novelistic and theatrical writing. The adaptation of novels for the stage is one of the primary areas where developing intellectual property law collided with cultural production, opening up, for writers such as Collins, new avenues to write, produce, and entertain. This article aims to expand on recent studies of the evolving nature of copyright law in the nineteenth century by considering the forms of cultural production that context facilitated. Considering the legal context of these adaptations in concert with, however, and not as ancillary to or separate from, their social and political valences highlights the modes of production that arose despite – or perhaps as a result of – the opaque nature of Victorian intellectual property laws. Wilkie Collins the successful dramatist, as opposed to Wilkie Collins the novelist writing for the stage, emerged in his own right partly due to the copyright contests that initially encouraged him to adapt his novels in the first place.
{"title":"Knighthoods and Empty Benches: Wilkie Collins’s Armadale and the Late Victorian Culture Industry","authors":"Robert Laurella","doi":"10.46911/tnox1088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46911/tnox1088","url":null,"abstract":"In locating Wilkie Collins’s novel Armadale (1866) in the context of its two subsequent dramatic versions, this article considers how the Victorian culture industry contended with an aggressively expanding market economy. It positions Collins’s work amid an ongoing Victorian debate that was especially prevalent in literary and dramatic periodicals concerning the bifurcated development of English drama and novels. Highlighting how Collins flexibly adapted his writing for the stage in the face of legal, commercial, and artistic pressures strengthens emerging links between the ostensibly discrete fields of novelistic and theatrical writing. The adaptation of novels for the stage is one of the primary areas where developing intellectual property law collided with cultural production, opening up, for writers such as Collins, new avenues to write, produce, and entertain. This article aims to expand on recent studies of the evolving nature of copyright law in the nineteenth century by considering the forms of cultural production that context facilitated. Considering the legal context of these adaptations in concert with, however, and not as ancillary to or separate from, their social and political valences highlights the modes of production that arose despite – or perhaps as a result of – the opaque nature of Victorian intellectual property laws. Wilkie Collins the successful dramatist, as opposed to Wilkie Collins the novelist writing for the stage, emerged in his own right partly due to the copyright contests that initially encouraged him to adapt his novels in the first place.","PeriodicalId":34865,"journal":{"name":"Victorian Popular Fictions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44452108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The British stage of the1850s produced a flurry of dramas influenced by Henry Mayhew’s work on urban poverty, many of which were written for the “minor” theatres of London’s East End and the south side of the Thames. Often dismissed as literary “hacks,” the writers for these theatres and their works have been largely undervalued and understudied. This article shines a spotlight on one such writer, John Beer Johnstone, whose How We Live in the World of London; Or, London Labour and the London Poor premiered at the Surrey Theatre on 24 March 1856. Taking a positive view of literary “piracy,” I argue that Johnstone’s play cleverly re-imagines Mayhew’s social journalism and subverts prevalent stereotypes of the urban poor for the Surrey’s mixed audiences.
{"title":"Melodramatic Mayhew: J.B. Johnstone’s How We Live in the World of London","authors":"Taryn Hakala","doi":"10.46911/axja8957","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46911/axja8957","url":null,"abstract":"The British stage of the1850s produced a flurry of dramas influenced by Henry Mayhew’s work on urban poverty, many of which were written for the “minor” theatres of London’s East End and the south side of the Thames. Often dismissed as literary “hacks,” the writers for these theatres and their works have been largely undervalued and understudied. This article shines a spotlight on one such writer, John Beer Johnstone, whose How We Live in the World of London; Or, London Labour and the London Poor premiered at the Surrey Theatre on 24 March 1856. Taking a positive view of literary “piracy,” I argue that Johnstone’s play cleverly re-imagines Mayhew’s social journalism and subverts prevalent stereotypes of the urban poor for the Surrey’s mixed audiences.","PeriodicalId":34865,"journal":{"name":"Victorian Popular Fictions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44596145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of Dickens After Dickens, edited by Emily Bell","authors":"Katie Beal","doi":"10.46911/gyik9852","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46911/gyik9852","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":34865,"journal":{"name":"Victorian Popular Fictions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49116446","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Drawing on correspondence and periodical advertising as well as paratextual and bibliographic detail, this paper compares editions of the three most prominent texts falsely associated with Oscar Wilde: The Green Carnation (1894), an intimate satire on Wilde’s relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas actually written by Douglas’ friend Robert Smythe Hichens; “The Priest and the Acolyte” (1894), a paedophilic story written by John Francis Bloxam and presented as evidence against Wilde during his libel trial and then privately reprinted; and the erotic novel Teleny (1893), which is still attributed to Wilde today. His name appeared in tandem with these novels over the course of a century, linking him further with sex and scandal. Two separate editions of Teleny in 1984 and 1986 feature introductions by Winston Leyland and John McRae, respectively justifying Wilde’s authorship and describing the work as likely a round-robin pornographic collaboration between Wilde and his young friends. By recognising and exposing these cases of literary impersonation, we can amend Wilde’s legacy.
本文利用通信和期刊广告以及文本和书目细节,比较了与奥斯卡·王尔德有关的三个最著名的文本的版本:《绿色康乃馨》(1894),这是一部关于王尔德与阿尔弗雷德·道格拉斯勋爵关系的亲密讽刺作品,实际上是道格拉斯的朋友罗伯特·斯迈斯·希金斯写的;《牧师和助手》(The Priest and The Acolyte, 1894)是约翰·弗朗西斯·布洛克森(John Francis Bloxam)写的一个恋童癖故事,在王尔德的诽谤罪审判中被作为指控他的证据,后来被私下转载;以及情色小说《Teleny》(1893),至今仍被认为是王尔德的作品。在一个世纪的时间里,他的名字与这些小说一起出现,进一步将他与性和丑闻联系在一起。1984年和1986年出版的两个版本分别由温斯顿·莱兰和约翰·麦克雷介绍,分别为王尔德的作者身份辩护,并将这部作品描述为王尔德和他的年轻朋友之间的轮番色情合作。通过认识和揭露这些文学模仿的案例,我们可以修正王尔德的遗产。
{"title":"Oscar Wilde’s Misattributions: A Legacy of Gross Indecency","authors":"Katerina García-Walsh","doi":"10.46911/pyiv5690","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46911/pyiv5690","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on correspondence and periodical advertising as well as paratextual and bibliographic detail, this paper compares editions of the three most prominent texts falsely associated with Oscar Wilde: The Green Carnation (1894), an intimate satire on Wilde’s relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas actually written by Douglas’ friend Robert Smythe Hichens; “The Priest and the Acolyte” (1894), a paedophilic story written by John Francis Bloxam and presented as evidence against Wilde during his libel trial and then privately reprinted; and the erotic novel Teleny (1893), which is still attributed to Wilde today. His name appeared in tandem with these novels over the course of a century, linking him further with sex and scandal. Two separate editions of Teleny in 1984 and 1986 feature introductions by Winston Leyland and John McRae, respectively justifying Wilde’s authorship and describing the work as likely a round-robin pornographic collaboration between Wilde and his young friends. By recognising and exposing these cases of literary impersonation, we can amend Wilde’s legacy.","PeriodicalId":34865,"journal":{"name":"Victorian Popular Fictions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47891857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}