ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces Wilde’s little-known personal and professional connections with the Paris network around the only female French Decadent writer, Rachilde (née Marguerite Eymery, 1860–1953), and her circle of writers and journalists at the Mercure de France, an influential literary journal that Rachilde cofounded and coedited with her husband, Alfred Vallette, from 1890 onward. Although not a household name today, Rachilde was a major player on the Parisian literary scene. The author of several scandalous Decadent novels, Rachilde held vibrant weekly salons that brought together the most cutting-edge writers of the 1880s-90s. Wilde had read Rachilde’s Monsieur Vénus (1884) and La marquise de Sade (1887) before writing The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890–91) and Salomé (1891). Rachilde was also a major financier and literary advisor for the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre, which boldly premiered Salomé during Wilde’s imprisonment (1896). Wilde attended at least one of Rachilde’s literary salons and socialized heavily with her circle, which overlapped substantially with his known Parisian connections. Henry Durand-Davray, an Anglophile critic and translator for the Mercure, translated one of Wilde’s best-known works, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, as well as biographical works about Wilde, into French. Along with Rachilde, Davray and others writing in the journal helped make the Mercure de France into a crucial advocate for Wilde’s literary reputation in France, not only throughout his trials and imprisonment, but also well beyond his death. The support of this publication and Rachilde’s circle of literary friends continued on into the 1920s; they tirelessly translated, discussed, and promoted Wilde during and after his 1897–1900 Paris exile. Dierkes-Thrun traces Rachilde’s and the Mercure’s importance to Wilde’s 1890s work and posthumous reputation, arguing that Rachilde and the Mercure network helped carry Wilde’s artistic reputation into the twentieth century. Exploring the personal and professional affinities between Oscar Wilde, Rachilde, and the Mercure, she argues, sheds new light on and adds important nuance to the story Wilde and Paris.
