Oscar Wilde's Oxford Notebooks

Oscar Wilde's Oxford Notebooks, which was originally published in 1989, was the first publication of Oscar Wilde's Notebook on History and Philosophy and his Commonplace Book, which he began to keep while a student at Oxford between 1874 and 1879, will forever alter critical perceptions of Wilde's intentions and achievements. Containing records of his education and reading - quotations and paraphrases of other writers and Wilde's own analytical and descriptive notes, comments, and fragmentary drafts - the notebooks show the intellectual influences he absorbed while in his early twenties.

In a critical commentary the editors argue that from these sources Wilde developed a synthesis of Spencerian evolutionary theory and Hegelian philosophy that shaped his aesthetic and critical theories, his political ideals, and the themes of his most important fiction. Wilde's synthesis, the editors contend, incorporated the views of scientists and social scientists like T. H Huxley, Charles Darwin, W. K. Clifford, John Tyndall, E. B. Tylor, and Herbert Spencer, historians like H. T. Buckle, W. H. Lecky, and Ernest Renan, and the English Hegelians, Benjamin Jowett and William Wallace.

Using this synthesis, Wilde confronted the major controversies of late Victorian intellectual life: the relation of mind and matter in philosophy, the origin and development of culture, and the roles of artist and critic in the improvement of society.

In addition to scrupulous annotation, this book provides a description of the manuscripts, historical evidence for dating, an introduction that describes the intellectual influence of Wilde's parents and their circle in Dublin, and a commentary that identifies the sources in the notebooks and substantially reinterprets Wilde's criticism and fiction.

An insightful and original study that will appeal to Wilde scholars, literary critics, and intellectual historians of the 19th century, the book provides a fresh look into the intellectual development of Wilde and reveals him to be a learned, radical humanist whose artistic and intellectual growth occurred within, and is representative of, the transformation of English cultural criticism after Darwin.

Philip E. Smith II, Associate Professor Emeritus of English, University of Pittsburgh and Michael Helfand, Associate Professor Emeritus of English, University of Pittsburgh

Philip Smith is the editor of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Oscar Wilde (MLA, 2008) and Oscar Wilde's Historical Criticism Notebook (Oxford University Press, 2016). He co-authored and co-edited Oscar Wilde's Oxford Notebooks: A Portrait of Mind in the Making (Oxford University Press, 1989) with Michael S. Helfand. He has also published refereed articles and invited chapters on Wilde, Constance Naden, Robert Heinlein, Ursula Le Guin, Brian Aldiss, August Wilson, John Galsworthy, Charles Olson, and on issues of curriculum, staffing, and teaching in the profession of English studies. He has retired from teaching in the English Department of the University of Pittsburgh.


Michael Helfand received a PhD in Modern Letters from the University of Iowa. He has taught 19th and 20th century English and American literature in the University of Pittsburgh. He co-authored and co-edited Oscar Wilde's Oxford Notebooks: A Portrait of Mind in the Making (Oxford University Press, 1989) with Philip Smith. He edited the Classics in American Literary Histories (8 vols.) Shanghai Foreign Education Press (1986-93). He has published essays on Victorian Psychology, Victorian Crime Fiction, T. H. Huxley, John Ruskin, Arthur Conan Doyle, and J.G. Frazer. He has been a Fulbright lecturer in China and in South Korea and served on the Fulbright nominating committees.

A List of Scholarship on Sources and CorrectionsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsA Note on CollaborationContents1. 1. The Text, 12. 1. The Context of the Text, 5Wilde's Irish Education, 6Wilde at Oxford: The Influence of F. Max Müller, 8Wilde at Oxford: The Influence of John Ruskin, 10Wilde at Oxford: Ruskin's Idealism Versus Pater's Materialism, 14Wilde and the Oxford Hegelians, 17Symonds, Pater, and Hegelian Aesthetics, 22Herbert Spencer and the Metaphysics of Evolution, 27W. K. Clifford and Moral Chemistry, 29Thomas H. Huxley and the Idealism of a Materialist, 32Wilde's Synthesis, 333. 1. The Text as Context, 35“Hélas” and the New Hellenism, 35The “Rise,” the Notebooks, and Historical Criticism, 37Dialectical Criticism after the “Rise,” 2Wilde's Lectures in America, 46Intentions and the Dialectical Method: “The Truth of Masks,” 53Decay and Progress in “The Decay of Lying,” 58The Con Artist as Critic: “Pen, Pencil and Poison,” 63The Critical Spirit as World Spirit in “The Critic as Artist,” 66Anarchy and Culture: The Evolutionary Turn of Wilde's Cultural Criticism, 77History and Faith: Interpreting the Sonnets, 87Conscience as Tribal Self in The Picture of Dorian Gray, 96Utopian Conclusion, 1044. 1. Oscar Wilde, Commonplace Book, 1075. 1. Oscar Wilde, Notebook Kept at Oxford, 1536. 1. Notes to Commonplace Book, 1757. 1. Notes to Notebook Kept at Oxford, 202Notes, 221An Index of Proper Names and Subjects in the Commentary, 239An Index of Proper Names and Subjects in Oscar Wilde's Commonpace Book, 247An Index of Proper Names and Subjects in Oscar Wilde's College Notebook, 253