WHERE IT WAS SAID
In press interviews on arriving in New York at the beginning of his lecture tour of North America, January 2 and 3, 1882.
WHERE IT APPEARED
“Oscar Wilde,” The Evening Post (New York, NY), January 3, 1882, 4
WHERE IT ALSO APPEARED
Printed simultaneously as “The Poet of the Aesthetes,” The Boston Herald (Boston, MA), January 4, 1882, 6. Excerpted in “The Chief Yearner,” The Boston Daily Globe (Boston, MA), January 4, 1882, 4; “Running Wilde,” The Topeka Daily Capital (Topeka, KS), January 4, 1882, 1.
WHERE IT REAPPEARED
“Aestheticism’s Expositor,” The Atchison Globe (Atchison, KS), January 5, 1882, 6; and “Arrival of Oscar Wilde,” The Emporia Daily News (Emporia, KS), January 5, 1882, 1; plus other and subsequent copy.
Credit:
With thanks and credit to Rob Marland for citing from the excellent sourcebook:
Oscar Wilde: The Complete Interviews: Volume One
Rob Marland (Author, Editor)
IN CONTEXT
“Where is this movement going to end?” asked the reporter.
“There is no end to it: it will go on forever, just as it had no beginning. I have used the word renaissance to show that it is no new thing with me. It has always existed. As time goes on the men and the forms of expression may change, but the principles will remain. Man is hungry for beauty: therefore he must be filled. There is a void; nature will fill it. The ridicule which aesthetes have been subjected to is only the envy of blind, unhappy souls who cannot find the path to beauty.”
“Oscar Wilde,” The Evening Post (New York, NY), January 3, 1882, 4
Oscar Wilde In America | © John Cooper, 2024
