Kate Hext is an associate professor in decadent literature and the arts at the University of Exeter and visiting professor of English at Ewha Womans University. Her books include Wilde in the Dream Factory: Oscar Wilde and the American Movies (OUP, 2024). Her new edition of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays will appear in Oxford World’s Classics next March. She writes semi-regularly for the TLS.

Sex, drugs, and cucumber sandwiches: How Oscar Wilde's Plays Helped to Create the Modern Rebel

In the early 1890s, Wilde's social comedy plays defined a new figure on stage: the dandy. There had been dandies before, but not like these. Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) Wilde's dandies made naughtiness look like stylish fun with their wit, insoucience, and stylish dressing. In doing so, they shocked and delighted Victorian London. They also – crucially -- began to define a new, altogether modern way of being a man. In this talk, I'll trace how, looking first at how Wilde's dandies were radical and then tracing their influence on a diverse cast of characters in the twentieth century, including Noel Coward and David Bowie.