Oscar Wilde in Special Collections
Literary Gothic in Special Collections
Brontë family manuscripts in Special Collections
Oscar Wilde in Special Collections
Twentieth century gothic: Dennis Wheatley & Sophie Hannah
Special Collections holds a small but significant collection of manuscripts and letters by Oscar Wilde. The image seen here is of the title page of the manuscript for Wilde's early play, The Duchess of Padua.
The Wilde material is a key part of the Fay and Geoffrey Elliott Collection. The Elliots began collecting the work of Oscar Wilde in the late 1970s with the intention of acquiring items worthy of any collection in the world, in the knowledge that they could not rival longer-established Wilde collections in size. The Duchess of Padua manuscript was acquired in 1993 and much of their later collecting focussed on Wilde and his contemporaries - including original material from people such as Aubrey Beardsley and Baron Corvo (Frederick William Rolfe).
