MetaFilter posts tagged with OscarWilde

Caricatures from the late 19th Century and early 20th

Kattullus — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:15:34 -0800

900 caricatures of noted Victorian and Edwardian personages from British society magazine Vanity Fair which ran from 1868 to 1914. Among those pictured are Oscar Wilde, Benjamin Disraeli, Herman Melville, Alfred Dreyfus, Teddy Roosevelt, Gustave Eiffel and Charles Boycott (from whose name comes the word). A couple are mildly not safe for work, a few quite racist, as was the prevalent attitude of the time, and at least one is both.

Classic Tales and Fables

Kattullus — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:41:39 -0800

Over 2000 classic tales and fables including Aesop's Fables, Bulfinch's Mythology, Indian "Why" Stories, tales by Oscar Wilde, Beatrix Potter, Rudyard Kipling, Louisa May Alcott, L. Frank Baum and Harriet Beecher Stowe and stories about Abraham Lincoln, Robin Hood and Baron Munchausen. And more! The folk and fairytale collection is particularly rich, with hundreds of stories from all over the world.

Over 2000 classic short stories

Kattullus — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 09:32:36 -0800

Over 2000 classic short stories from American Literature as well as an option to sign up for a short story of the day rss feed. Among the authors on offer are Kate Chopin, Saki, O. Henry, Louisa May Alcott, Ambrose Bierce, H. P. Lovecraft, Jack London, James Joyce, Willa Cather, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Dickens, Herman Hesse, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Franz Kafka, Honoré de Balzac, Edith Warton, P. G. Wodehouse, Virginia Woolf, Langston Hughes, Leo Tolstoy, Aldous Huxley, Roald Dahl, Henry James, Katherine Mansfield and I could keep going for a while. The point is, there's over 2000 short stories in there.

"The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac".

matteo — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 12:15:25 -0800

The Niagara Fortissimo. “Mahler was to conduct in Buffalo, New York, and we took advantage of the trip to visit Niagara Falls. We spent hours near and even under the roaring falls... and then with that roar still in his ears Mahler went to conduct Beethoven’s ‘Pastorale’. I was waiting for him as he stepped off the podium. ‘Endlich ein fortissimo!,’ he said, ‘At last a fortissimo!’” The fortissimo in question is Beethoven's, not Niagara's. The point, as Alma elaborates it in her memoirs, is that music can offer experiences more overpowering than Nature itself — a kind of extreme aestheticism that Oscar Wilde also propounded in "The Decay of Lying" when he said that most sunsets are attempts at second-rate Turners. More inside.

"And I reckon that he was the prettiest limey that a bronco ever rode"

JHarris — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 21:36:21 -0800

The Ballad of a Feller Named Oscar Wilde ( -mp3 link-, 5.13mb )
Found from the homepage of Joe. R. Lansdale, Champion Mojo Storyteller of Nagadoches, Texas (author of the story upon which Bubba Ho-Tep was based) and is, apparently, based on an actual event. Linked here because, well, because honestly we could all use a little more Dr. Demento in our lives.

plinth — Mon, 04 Dec 2000 17:13:09 -0800

A little too much Aural Sex, Mr. Wilde?