Wilde as editor of a feminist monthly

Wilde, Oscar, Anglo-Irish writer (1854-1900). Autograph letter signed ("Oscar Wilde").

€ 25.000,00

To the actress and socialite Maria Louisa (née Long), Lady Monckton: "Dear Lady Monckton, Will you, when your holiday arrives, write me a short article upon modern plays and modern acting, for a monthly magazine to which I have been asked to become literary adviser. The Princess Christian [of Schleswig-Holstein, Queen Victoria's daughter], Lady Salisbury, Lady Dorothy Nevill and others have kindly promised to write for me, and I want to make the magazine an organ through which women of culture and position will have the opportunity of expressing their views. The article need only be five or six pages long, and you would have no difficulty in writing on a subject about which you know so much. I hope you will consent to do it as an article from you would excite a great deal of attention [...]".

Wilde edited "The Woman’s World" from 1887 to 1889. It was he who changed the name from "The Lady's World: an Illustrated Magazine of Fashion and Society", as it had been inceived in October 1886: thus, Wilde aimed to address an élite but expanding readership of middle and upper class educated women with literary and social credentials, and campaigned for women's emancipation in patriarchal Victorian society. His name attracted several well-known contributors, including the suffragist Laura McLaren, Baroness Aberconway, and the actress Sarah Bernhardt. Wilde even approached Queen Victoria for some poems, but was turned down. Lady Monckton’s only contribution to the magazine appeared in 1890, in the form of an article by Frederick Dolman, entitled "Lady Monckton at Home" (vol. 3, pp. 395-397).

The American-born amateur actress Maria Louisa Long (1837-1920) had married Sir John Braddick Monckton, a British lawyer and civil servant, in 1858. She was the mother of Lionel Monckton, Britain's most popular composer of musical comedies during the Edwardian period.

Another letter by Wilde from the same time, similarly soliciting Lady Monckton for a contribution to his journal, is held at the National Library of Ireland (MS 41,868).