Oscar Wilde and the French Press, 1880–91

Abstract

While most accounts of Oscar Wilde’s reception history agree that French critics paid little attention to his work until the 1890s, this article suggests that the French press responded to Wilde’s writing earlier—throughout the 1880s—and in a more sustained fashion than has been previously thought. Tracing dozens of contemporary articles never before discussed, it shows that the periodical press in France attended to each of the major developments in Wilde’s career, including his first volume of poetry and the essays that marked his shift from a lecturing aesthete to a writer of consequence.