Oscar Wilde as Editor
lication. The names in the first number included Lady Archibald Campbell, the Countess of Portsmouth, Mrs. Bancroft, Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Jeune, George Fleming, and Amy Levy. Among later contributors were "Ouida," Lady Dorothy Nevill, "Carmen Sylva," Olive Schreiner, and, indeed, every writer who counted for anything in the literary world of women.
It was, of course, expected that the editor's own contributions would form a chief feature of the magazine, and it was arranged that he should write "Literary and Other Notes" for each month's issue. These duly appeared in the first four numbers, but, alas! then there came a falling off, so that the first annual volume contained but five contributions from the editor's pen. His second and last volume contained six, the result of a direct hint from the publishers that the editor was not sufficiently in evidence. But these contributions demanded great effort, and oftentimes press day found the printers awaiting "copy" for the pages left for the editor to fill.
These Notes are probably not generally known. They contain some piercing and characteristic shafts of criticism, and at least one notable appreciation. Before the first number of the Woman's World was actually published, the author of "John Halifax, Gentleman," died, and one of the Notes was devoted to her and her work. "Mrs. Craik," Wilde wrote, "was one of the finest of our women writers, and though her art had always what Keats called 'a palpable intention upon one,' still its imaginative qualities were of no mean order. There is hardly one of her books which has not some distinction of style: there is certainly not one of them that does not show love of all that is good and beautiful in life. The good she perhaps loved somewhat more than the beautiful, but her heart had room for both. . . . Her last work was done for the magazine which I have the honour to edit. She was very much interested in the scheme for the foundation of the Woman's World, suggested its title,
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