| This dissertation contributes to an emerging body of scholarship on understudied aspects of Oscar Wilde's early work, particularly his writings and ventures into late Victorian discourses of aesthetics and fashion. I analyze Wilde's editorship of a Cassell's publication called The Lady's World, re-titled as The Woman's World (1887-1890). My goal is not only to revise Wilde scholarship, but also to revise the understanding of feminism and progressive women's discourse at the fin de siecle , and to consider the participation of male writers in such a discourse. Chapter one discusses Wilde's editorial strategies that modernized the magazine and created a particularly gendered space. I locate a general, ideal reader---the modern woman---but also consider male writers in the magazine. I show that The Woman's World was a desirable project that allowed Wilde access to a mainstream audience, as well as the tools to construct a more specialized one. In chapter two, I shift focus to the diverse female writers Wilde recruited for The Woman's World. The magazine is revealed as an experimental space in several ways, as late Victorian women writers attempted to transcend the traditional philanthropic relation between different social classes, and a radically modern woman, a forerunner of the New Woman of the 1890s, is delineated largely against a universal model of femininity. Chapter three focuses on Wilde's construction of a specialized and largely female audience in his early career and the rhetorical appeals of aestheticism, a discourse of the arts as well as a popular cultural formation in late Victorian England and America in which Wilde played a central role. Aesthetic dress reform is considered as particularly inspiring to female readers and consumers. Wilde, I argue, urges women to style themselves, to participate in new levels of the fashion system. I cover the 1882 American lecture tour, Wilde's writings on fashion throughout the 1880s, and finally, aestheticism as an influence in The Woman's World. In chapter four I argue that Wilde promotes unconventional images of beauty in The Woman's World, an aspect of the influence of aestheticism on the magazine. |
