Talk:Oscar Wilde

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Oscar Wilde has been listed as one of the Language and literature good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones Date Process Result November 15, 2004 Peer review Reviewed January 17, 2006 Good article nominee Listed August 8, 2007 WikiProject peer review Reviewed June 13, 2009 Good article reassessment Delisted April 14, 2010 Good article nominee Listed August 16, 2010 Peer review Reviewed Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on May 24, 2004, April 6, 2005, April 6, 2006, April 3, 2007, April 3, 2008, April 3, 2009, April 3, 2010, April 3, 2012, April 3, 2014, April 3, 2016, April 3, 2019, and April 3, 2022. Current status: Good article

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two edits suggested

Two edits suggested, to be implemented by someone with editing rights on this page:

1. where it says that £60 in 1895 is "equal to £8,800 today", this latter figure should be updated to "£10,000" (October 2024)

2. Re the sentence that says "Another teenager who said they had engaged in sex acts with Wilde, Walter Grainger, who was 16 at the time, said Wilde had threatened him with "very serious trouble" if he told anyone about their relationship": the fifth word should be corrected from 'they' to 'he'. (It makes no sense to use an anonymous "they" pronoun here, when male pronouns are correctly used twice later in the same sentence to refer to the same person.) 82.7.176.216 (talk) 16:48, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

1. I have replaced the inflation template used in this article so that the modern-day reference dates will automatically update. They will not refer to up-to-the-minute exchange rates: currently, values for 2023 are given.

2. I agree that the sentence as phrased is unclear and have made the requested edit. Tamara Gardens (talk) 07:32, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Error of fact

In the final paragraph of the 'Trials' section Walter Grainger's age is given as 16 at the time of his encounter with Wilde - he was actually 17 (see Iain Ross, "I Took Pleasure where it Pleased Me", The Wildean 55 https://www.jstor.org/stable/48569322.

In the same paragraph Antony Edmonds is quoted as saying (correctly) that it is now illegal in the UK to pay under-18s for sex. It may be more relevant to note that in the 1890s (and until 2003) it was not illegal to pay girls of 16 or over for sex - thus Wilde would not have been guilty of any crime if the teenagers he paid for sex had been female rather than male. https://dbooks.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/books/PDFs/N11114913.pdf https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/pdfs/ukpga_20030042_en.pdf 80.41.3.146 (talk) 20:43, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

I have read Ross's article and Edmonds's book and agree with both points made above.

On the first point: The age of 16 for Grainger appears to have taken from Field's article for the Independent, which there is no reason to trust over Ross's article – the definitive article on the ages of Wilde's known sexual partners that has not been superseded since it was published in 2019. I also note that Edmonds refers to Grainger as "a boy of the same age as Arthur Fenn" (p. 33; Fenn was 17, p. 32).

On the second point: The quotation of Edmonds does feel like it could mislead readers. The phrase "which is a criminal offence" would seem to be the tricky point, as the act referred to (paying for sex with youths under 18) is a criminal offence today but was not in 1895. The phrasing cannot be changed as it is part of Edmonds's quotation (taken from the Independent). But another option might be to quote the relevant part of Edmonds's book instead. He says "Today men who have sexual relations with boys under sixteen can be sentenced up to fourteen years in prison, and paying for sex with a boy of sixteen or seventeen carries a sentence of up to seven years. Wilde probably committed the first of these offences, and he was certainly guilty of the second." (pp. 143–4)

I would also say that the first sentence of the relevant paragraph ("Although it is widely believed that the charges were related to Wilde's consensual activities") seems to need a citation. Who believes this widely? Although I agree that this IS widely believed, without a citation it is speculation. Tamara Gardens (talk) 07:59, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Edmonds's grounds for believing that Wilde 'probably committed the first of these offences' are dubious (putting aside the strange idea that you can be guilty of an offence that won't exist until long after your death): the witness statement of Jane Cotta, who offered different testimony under oath and whose extreme short sight made her an unreliable witness; and the witness statement of Herbert Tankard, who alleged no sexual relations between himself and Wilde (and who, incidently, was not thirteen or fourteen, as Ross and Edmonds, both relying on Neil McKenna's Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, state, but nearly sixteen - see Joseph Bristow, Oscar Wilde on Trial, p. 81, which relies on Tankard's birth certificate).

If it's widely believed that the charges related to consensual activities I would say that that's because they did - there is no evidence of coercion, as distinct from stark differences in age, status, wealth etc., as was fairly normal in Victorian times and throughout most of human history. The 'Turing Act' pardoned all those historically found guilty of consensual homosexual activity between partners aged 16 or over (unless it happened in a public toilet), and that included Wilde. I'm not sure why that sentence is needed or why it starts with 'although'. 80.41.3.146 (talk) 18:31, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Another error is that it’s not The Trials of Oscar Wilde that contains a transcript of the libel trial, nor did the actual book in question (Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess: The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde) reveal anything new about the ages of Wilde’s sexual partners. I would suggest replacing the first sentence with: ‘Although the charges related to consensual activities with male partners of sixteen or over, some of those Wilde paid for sex, including Charles Parker, one of the two named people he was convicted of gross indecency with, were under eighteen at the time.’ Ross’s article could then be referenced. To the sentence about Walter Grainger I would add ‘though Iain Ross points out that he may have been warning him of the risk of imprisonment for both of them if they were exposed.’ To the end of the paragraph I would add: ‘It did not criminalise paying for sex with girls of sixteen or over.’ 80.41.3.146 (talk) 16:55, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

One more suggestion: after the suggested sentence above ending '... were under eighteen at the time' I would insert 'Paying under-eighteens for sex has been illegal in the UK since 2003.' This would then explain the context of the following quotation from Antony Edmonds. 80.41.3.146 (talk) 09:04, 9 November 2024 (UTC)