Edited by Oscar Wilde
WILDE, Oscar (editor). The Woman’s World. Vol. 1 No. 7 June 1888. New York Cassell And Company Ltd. 1888.

Small folio (24.5 x 32cm); original peach coloured wrappers blocked with a large Art Nouveau design in darker orange, with advertisements to lower cover, stapled; pp. 289-336 + [8] advertisements; with a photographic portrait frontispiece of Prince Charles Edward Stuart disguised as “Betty Burke” printed on coated stock, and illustrations throughout after engravings; a good, sound and complete copy; externally dust-soiled and marked, with old paper spine reinforcement, now abraded, wrappers chipped with several closed edge-tears (now neatly attended to with archival tissue-tape) and with a couple of longer and unobtrusive lateral closed tears from inner edge of covers, again carefully repaired and unremarkable; internally with archival tissue-strengthening along 8cm of inner gutter of first leaf, occasional light marginal marking or thumbing, and corner loss to final leaf (not affecting text).

First edition of the American issue (published in New York)  of this seventh number of Oscar Wilde’s reconceived periodical of the 1880s aimed at women, which was renamed from “The Lady’s World” at his insistence when he assumed editorship in 1887.  This new title was suggested to him by the writer Dinah Maria Craik. She was considered an early modern feminist and Wilde eulogised her in his first editorial.  Wilde was distracted from the project in 1890 and the magazine collapsed at this time.

The market for periodicals expanded quickly in the late nineteenth century and to feed the growing demand Cassell & Co. launched a new magazine aimed at an aspirant middle-class female audience (who made up the larger part of the market for fiction) and fed them articles on social trends and fashion.

In May 1887, when Wilde took up tenure as editor he targeted an emerging class of more educated women, reflecting his advanced attitudes towards female emancipation and the role of women in society.  He secured serialised contributions from esteemed writers including Marie Corelli and, as this issue shows, included more academic essays such as “Dublin Castle”, by Rosa Mulholland (the female writer previously championed by Charles Dickens) and articles on “Modern Greek Poets”, “St. George the Chevalier”, and tales about the life and death of the late St. Clement Ker, alongside chats on smocking and the latest fashions.

The frontispiece depicts the cross-dressed Prince Charles Edward Stuart in disguise as “Betty Burke” when he fled the Hanoverians after his defeat at Culloden in 1746.

Original individual copies of this ephemeral magazine are infrequently encountered; bound runs in publisher’s cloth turn up more often but are still elusive.