Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T11:46:35.426Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“BALLADS IN PROSE”: GENRE CROSSING IN LATE-VICTORIAN WOMEN'S WRITING

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 August 2006

Margaret D. Stetz
Margaret D. Stetz
Affiliation:
University of Delaware
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

“Oh, it is indeed a burning shame that there would be one law for men and another law for women. I think that there should be no law for anybody” (Beckson, I Can Resist 100). So said Oscar Wilde to a journalist interviewing him in January 1895. And for the first five years of the 1890s, it looked as though the British literary and publishing worlds, at least, were increasingly in accord with this Wildean perspective. Texts challenging the double standard of heterosexual conduct proliferated, even as bold articulations of same-sex desire appeared. At the same time, laws of all sorts that governed the production and consumption of literature seemed to be struck down daily. The three-volume novel declined and, with it, the circulating libraries' law of conforming to Mudie's definition of the reading public's tastes. New Women and other new realists gleefully violated the laws that required fictional narratives to end with marriage or, indeed, to provide some version of closure. In the sphere of periodical publishing, the law demanding that the visual arts be subordinate to words vanished in April 1894 with the first issue of the Yellow Book. The Bodley Head's new quarterly proudly stated that “The pictures will in no case serve as illustrations to the letter-press, but each will stand by itself as an independent contribution” (Stetz and Lasner 8).

Type
Decadence and Endings
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , September 2006 , pp. 619 - 629
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allingham William. 1887 Irish Songs and Poems. London: Reeves and Turner,
Barlow Jane. 1892 Bog-Land Studies. London: T. Fisher Unwin,
Baudelaire Charles. 1968 Petits poèmes en prose. Manchester: Manchester UP,
Beckson Karl, ed. 1996 I Can Resist Everything Except Temptation and Other Quotations from Oscar Wilde. New York: Columbia UP,
Beckson Karl, ed. 1998 The Oscar Wilde Encyclopedia. New York: AMS,
Brake Laurel. 2001 Print in Transition, 1850–1910: Studies in Media and Book History. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave,
Davidson John. 1895 “Proem to ‘The Wonderful Mission of Earl Lavender.’” Yellow Book January: 284– 85.Google Scholar
Driscoll Robert O. 1988 “Continuity in Loss: The Irish and Anglo-Irish Traditions.” Anglo-Irish and Irish Literature: Aspects of Language and Culture. Ed. Birgit Bramsbäck and Martin Croghan. 2 vols. Uppsala: Uppsala UP, 143– 57.
1898 “Egerton, George.” [Mary Chavelita Dunne.] Fantasias. John Lane, The Bodley Head,
Ellmann Richard. 1987 Oscar Wilde. London: Hamish Hamilton,
Holland Merlin. 2003 Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess: The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde. London: Fourth Estate,
Hopper Nora. 1894 Ballads in Prose. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head,
Hopper Nora. 1896 Under Quicken Boughs. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head,
Houfe Simon. 1981 The Dictionary of British Book Illustrators and Caricaturists, 1800–1914. Rev. Ed. Woodbridge Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club,
Le Gallienne Richard. 1895 “Four Prose Fancies.” Yellow Book July: 307– 26.Google Scholar
Pater Walter. 1889 Appreciations with an Essay on Style. London: Macmillan,
Rossetti Christina. 1998. “Maude.” Selected Prose of Christina Rossetti. Ed. David A. Kent and P. G. Stanwood. New York: St. Martin's, 17– 51.
Schreiner Olive. 1893 Dream Life and Real Life. London: T. Fisher Unwin,
Schreiner Olive. 1992 The Story of an African Farm. Ed. Joseph Bristow. Oxford: Oxford UP,
Stetz Margaret D., and Mark Samuels Lasner. 1994 The Yellow Book: A Centenary Exhibition. Cambridge: Houghton Library,
Tynan Katharine. 1894 A Cluster of Nuts: Being Sketches Among My Own People. London: Lawrence and Bullen,
Tynan Katharine. 1895 An Isle in the Water. London: Adam and Charles Black,
Weekes Ann Owen. 1990 Irish Women Writers: An Uncharted Tradition. Lexington: UP of Kentucky,
Welch Robert, ed. The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. Oxford: Clarendon.
Wilde Oscar. 1979 “Poems in Prose.” Oscar Wilde: Complete Shorter Fiction. Ed. Isobel Murray. Oxford: Oxford UP, 253– 63.
Woodall Natalie Joy. 1993 “Barlow, Jane (1857–1917).” The 1890s: An Encyclopedia of British Literature, Art, and Culture. Ed. G. A. Cevasco. New York: Garland, 38– 39.
Woodall Natalie Joy. “Hopper, Nora (1871–1906).” The 1890s: An Encyclopedia of British Literature, Art, and Culture. 284– 85.
Yeats William Butler. 1893 The Celtic Twilight: Men and Women, Dhouls and Fairies. London: Lawrence and Bullen,
Yeats William Butler. 1986 The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats: Volume One, 1865–1895. Ed. John Kelly. Oxford: Clarendon,
Yeats William Butler. 1888 Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry: Edited and Selected by W. B. Yeats. London: Walter Scott,