Wilde Project

The textual studies project I am working on for this class is actually on Oscar Wilde, and I think there are many opportunities for doing a fascinating investigation into the reader/author circuit that Darnton describes through the use of digital archives. These investigations could show how the interpretation of Wilde's texts by readers changed over time, and how this effected the way Wilde himself manipulated his texts. There are several digital archives of Wilde's manuscripts and letters, including the Harry Ransom Center's collection at UT Austin. One could focus on a certain text (The Picture of Dorian Gray seems perfect for such an investigation), and see what Wilde says in his manuscripts and letters about reader reception of the texts. This could provide insight into why Wilde made some of the emendations to this text, but even beyond that this easy access to his manuscripts could provide information about how Wilde's contemporary readers interpreted some of the themes in his novel. The ability to easily look at letters and manuscripts all in one place is invaluable (as opposed to having to physically go to each collection).

There is also room for expansion in Wilde digital archives. Some of them provide copies of actual texts, but as far as I can find there is no archive that has different variants of one text digitized. This would also be incredibly helpful, because the researcher could compare textual variants side by side to see exactly what Wilde changed (instead of having to rely solely on a single print edition with variants or multiple print editions). This would again provide useful information about the reception of certain thematic issues in Wilde's text, thus providing more insight into Victorian culture and readers.