Oscar Wilde’s short story ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’ appeared in the same year that Sherlock Holmes made his debut appearance in print, and curiously, both stories feature a man with an uncanny ability to read the details of people’s lives from very small details. But unlike Conan Doyle’s consulting detective, […]
‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars’: this oft-quoted line from Oscar Wilde was not spoken by Wilde during conversation, as so many of his witty lines were. Instead, ‘we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at […]
‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ is a fairy tale by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), included in his 1888 collection The Happy Prince and Other Tales. Whereas ‘The Selfish Giant’ (from the same collection) deals with Christian love and the title story is about socialism and kindness towards others in society, ‘The […]
Of all of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales for children, ‘The Selfish Giant’ has the strongest Christian symbolism and is clearly meant to be read and analysed as an allegory for Christian love. In this post, we’ll take a closer look at the story and its meaning and imagery. You can […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the origins of a famous phrase associated with Oscar Wilde Which writer gave us the expression ‘the love that dare not speak its name’? Oscar Wilde? He gave us many other famous quotations, of course; but although ‘the […]