Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture - Ohio University Press & Swallow ...

MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 274–75. The manuscript of “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.” was
waiting to go into production when news broke about Wilde’s failed libel suit in April 1895. Bruccoli
states that Kennerley knew that the revised version had been in the hands of Lane’s office manager,
Frederic Chapman, and he sold it for Chapman’s sister to Dr. Rosenbach for $3,000. Bruccoli,
Fortunes of Mitchell Kennerley, 141–42.
105. Dudley Edwards, “The Wilde Goose Chase,” American Book Collector 7, no. 5 (1957): 3–14.
Edwards’s commentary relates to the stack of forgeries held at the Clark Library (Wilde 6271 C687).
106. These pseudonyms suggest an insider’s knowledge of Wilde’s circle. “Sebastian” is, of
course, taken from Wilde’s own incognito, “Sebastian Melmoth”; “Dorian” comes from Wilde’s
novel The Picture of Dorian Gray; and “Hope” is a name belonging to Constance Wilde’s family
through marriage (Adrian Hope [1858–1904] became the guardian of Cyril Holland and Vyvyan
Holland after their mother’s death).
107. Quoted in Edwards, “Wilde Goose Chase,” 5. Cravan would have been about thirty-three
years of age at the time of this meeting.
108. “‘Dorian Hope’ Verses Filched by Clerk,” New York Times, 5 April 1921. The previous
owner of my copy of Hope’s volume identified the author of each work that Hope plagiarized.
109. Vyvyan Holland made this observation in a letter to William Figgis, 23 Sept 1955 (Clark
Library, Wilde 6271 C687).
110. Anthony Gardner, “The Oscar Sinners,” Sunday Times [London], 8 July 2007. Gardner reports
that at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair, a manuscript of Wilde’s “Happy Prince” was
expected to command this figure until Ed Maggs of the famous book dealers exposed it as a fake.
111. George Sims, “Who Wrote For Love of the King? Oscar Wilde or Mrs. Chan Toon,” Book
Collector (Autumn 1958): 276–77. Wilde’s translator, Henry-D. Davray, inquires into the activities
of “Mrs. Chan Toon” in Oscar Wilde: La tragédie finale—suivi de épisodes et souvenirs et des apocryphes
(Paris: Mercure de France, 1928), 173–237.
112. Hester Travers Smith, Psychic Messages from Oscar Wilde (London: T. Werner Laurie,
1924), 13; further page reference appears in parentheses. For further commentary on Smith’s
book, see John Stokes, Oscar Wilde: Myths, Miracles, and Imitations (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), 5–8.
Introduction 45