Oscar Wilde photographed by Napoleon Sarony, 1882.
These photographs were taken in January of 1882, when Wilde had first arrived in America for his year long lecture tour. All were taken in the studio of the most famous portrait photographer of the time, Canadian born Napoleon Sarony. The various furs, capes, velvet jackets, and stockings Wilde wore for the photo shoot reflected the attire he would wear to his lectures.
It certainly surprised me when I found out that the majority of Wilde’s most iconic images came from the same session, and were taken in the U.S. when Wilde had only published a yet to be produced play, Vera; or, the Nihilists, and a single book of verse (which Wilde can be seen holding in the first and second photographs).
literature meme: movements [2/2]
The “Lost Generation” was the generation that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway, who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to Gertrude Stein, who was then his mentor and patron.
In A Moveable Feast, which was published after both Hemingway and Stein were dead and after a literary feud that lasted much of their life, Hemingway reveals that the phrase was actually originated by the garage owner who serviced Stein’s car. When a young mechanic failed to repair the car in a way satisfactory to Stein, the garage owner shouted at the boy, “You are all a “génération perdue.” Stein, in telling Hemingway the story, added, “That is what you are. That’s what you all are … all of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation.” This generation included distinguished artists such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, John Dos Passos, Waldo Peirce, Isadora Duncan, Abraham Walkowitz, Alan Seeger, and Erich Maria Remarque.
literature meme | 1/6 prose writers f. scott fitzgerald
“Often, I think writing is a sheer paring away from oneself, leaving always something thinner, barer, more meager.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, letter to his daughter, April 7th 1940
I held my pillow
and thought “oh well”
in regards to my entire life."
