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Object: Letter from Oscar Wilde to Boyle
Creator: Oscar Wilde (Irish, 1854-1900)
Date: ca. 1882
Shelf-mark: Box 2, Folder 4, Oscar Wilde Collection
Repository: Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Rights: Public Domain
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Likely written during his American tour, this piece of correspondence is a good example of Oscar Wilde’s distinctive penmanship, which sometimes collapses certain letters together and abbreviates occasional words. Wilde runs out of paper at the end, and the text finishes on the left margin of the final page.
Transcription (click to reveal)Why are you out? Dining too much aggravates it: I want to see you about my mother’s poems. I think your idea about a preface is excellent – She is very anxious to have them brought out, and if you will induce Roberts to do it she will send you her later work which is so strong and splendid – I lecture tonight at Lynn – and may be passing thro’ Boston tomorrow – if I knew your hours I wd come & see you – but I can’t if you insist on taking dinner at the wrong time –
I think my mother’s work should make a great success here – it is so unlike the work of her degenerate artistic son – I know you think I am thrilled by nothing but a dado. You are quite wrong but I shant argue.
Yours
Oscar Wilde