ABSTRACT
A precis of Bainton's anthology, for this purposes, runs as follows: The spiritual essayist Augustine Birrell states, "The style is the man, and imitation of any body's style is as much to be avoided as the cock of his hat or way of swinging his umbrella. Where the style scientists and the popular journalists focus on "personality" without much considering language as an expedient of cultural mediation, rhetorics, in the traditional or pragmatic sense of the word, are not completely absent from the fin-de-siecle. Oscar Wilde's conception of audience falls somewhere between that of Robertson and Saintsbury, for Wilde's social vision certainly favored a nurtured, diverse and autodidactic public but was at the same time wary of the homogenizing force of the press upon the public. Wainewright is a sensational personality, and would thus make for excellent newspaper copy in the present, and a man of letters whom Wilde identifies as an originator of the worst elements of journalistic prose.
