The 100 Most Influential Writers of All Time (30 page)

In his later years, James lived in retirement in an 18th-century house at Rye in Sussex, though on completion of
The Golden Bowl
he revisited the United States in 1904–05. James had lived abroad for 20 years, and in the interval America had become a great industrial and political power. On his return to England he wrote
The American Scene
(1907), prophetic in its vision of urban doom, spoliation, and pollution of resources and filled with misgivings over the anomalies of a “melting pot” civilization. He devoted three years to rewriting and revising his principal novels and tales for the highly selective “New York Edition,” published in 24 volumes. For this edition James wrote 18 significant prefaces, which contain both reminiscence and exposition of his theories of fiction. Throwing his moral weight into Britain's struggle in World War I, James became a British subject in 1915 and received the Order of Merit from King George V.

(b. Jan. 22, 1849, Stockholm, Swed.—d. May 14, 1912, Stockholm)

A
ugust Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, and short-story writer who combined psychology and Naturalism in a new kind of European drama that evolved into Expressionist drama.

Strindberg's childhood was marred by emotional insecurity, poverty, his grandmother's religious fanaticism, and neglect. He studied intermittently at the University of Uppsala, preparing in turn for the ministry and a career in medicine but never taking a degree. To earn his living, he worked as a freelance journalist in Stockholm, as well as at other jobs that he almost invariably lost. Meanwhile he struggled to complete his first
important work, the historical drama
Mäster Olof
(published in 1872), on the theme of the Swedish Reformation, influenced by Shakespeare and by Henrik Ibsen's
Brand
. The Royal Theatre's rejection of
Mäster Olof
deepened his pessimism and sharpened his contempt for official institutions and traditions. For several years he continued revising the play, later recognized as the first modern Swedish drama.

In 1874 he became a librarian at the Royal Library, and in 1875 he met the Finno-Swedish Siri von Essen, then the unhappy wife of an officer of the guards; two years later they married. Their intense but ultimately disastrous relationship ended in divorce in 1891, when Strindberg, to his great grief, lost the custody of their four children. At first, however, marriage stimulated his writing, and in 1879 he published his first novel,
The Red Room
, a satirical account of abuses and frauds in Stockholm society. This was something new in Swedish fiction and made its author nationally famous.

He also wrote more plays, of which
Lucky Peter's Travels
(1881) contains the most biting social criticism. In 1883 Strindberg left Stockholm with his family and for six years moved restlessly about the Continent. Although he was then approaching a state of complete mental breakdown, he produced a great number of plays, novels, and stories. The publication in 1884 of the first volume of his collected stories,
Married
, led to a prosecution for blasphemy. He was acquitted, but the case affected his mind, and he imagined himself persecuted, even by Siri.

He returned to drama with new intensity, and the conflict between the sexes inspired some of the outstanding works written at this time, such as
The Father
(1887),
Miss Julie
(1888), and
The Creditors
(1888). All of these were written in total revolt against contemporary social conventions. In these bold and concentrated works, he combined the
techniques of dramatic Naturalism—including unaffected dialogue, stark rather than luxurious scenery, and the use of stage props as symbols—with his own conception of psychology, thereby inaugurating a new movement in European drama.
The People of Hemsö
, a vigorous novel about the Stockholm skerries (rocky islands), always one of Strindberg's happiest sources of inspiration, was also produced during this intensively creative phase.

The years after his return to Sweden in 1889 were lonely and unhappy. Even though revered as a famous writer who had become the voice of modern Sweden, he was by now an alcoholic unable to find steady employment. In 1892 he went abroad again, to Berlin. His second marriage, to a young Austrian journalist, Frida Uhl, followed in 1893; they finally parted in Paris in 1895.

A period of literary sterility, emotional and physical stress, and considerable mental instability culminated in a kind of religious conversion, the crisis that he described in
Inferno
. During these years Strindberg devoted considerable time to experiments in alchemy and to the study of theosophy. His new faith, coloured by mysticism, re-created him as a writer. The immediate result was a drama in three parts,
To Damascus
, in which he depicts himself as “the Stranger,” a wanderer seeking spiritual peace and finding it with another character, “the Lady,” who resembles both Siri and Frida.

By this time Strindberg had again returned to Sweden, settling first in Lund and then, in 1899, in Stockholm, where he lived until his death. The summers he often spent among his beloved skerries. His view that life is ruled by the “Powers,” punitive but righteous, was reflected in a series of historical plays that he began in 1889. Of these,
Gustav Vasa
is the best, masterly in its firmness of construction, characterization, and its vigorous dialogue. In 1901 he married the young Norwegian actress Harriet
Bosse; in 1904 they parted, and again Strindberg lost the child, his fifth.

Yet his last marriage, this “spring in winter,” as he called it, inspired, among other works, the plays
The Dance of Death
and
A Dream Play
, as well as the charming autobiography
Ensam
(“Alone”) and some lyrical poems. Renewed bitterness after his parting from his last wife provoked the grotesquely satirical novel
Svarta Fanor
(1907; “Black Banners”), which attacked the vices and follies of Stockholm's literary coteries, as Strindberg saw them.
Kammarspel
(“Chamber Plays”), written for the little Intima Theatre, which Strindberg ran for a time with a young producer, August Falck, embody further developments of his dramatic technique: of these,
The Ghost Sonata
(1907) is the most fantastic, anticipating much in later European drama. His last play,
The Great Highway
, a symbolic presentation of his own life, appeared in 1909. He was ignored in death, as in life, by the Swedish Academy but mourned by his countrymen as their greatest writer. On Swedish life and letters he has exercised a lasting influence.

(b. Oct. 16, 1854, Dublin, Ire.—d. Nov. 30, 1900, Paris, France)

O
scar Wilde was an Irish wit, poet, and dramatist whose reputation rests on his only novel,
The Picture of Dorian Gray
(1891), and on his comic plays. He was a spokesman for the late 19th-century Aesthetic movement in England, which advocated art for art's sake; and he was the object of celebrated civil and criminal suits involving homosexuality and ending in his imprisonment.

Wilde went, on successive scholarships, to Trinity College, Dublin (1871–74), and Magdalen College, Oxford (1874–78), which awarded him a degree with honours.
During these four years, he distinguished himself not only as a classical scholar, a poseur, and a wit but also as a poet by winning the coveted Newdigate Prize in 1878 with a long poem,
Ravenna
.

In the early 1880s, when Aestheticism was the rage and despair of literary London, Wilde established himself in social and artistic circles by his wit and flamboyance. Soon the periodical
Punch
made him the satiric object of its antagonism to the Aesthetes for what was considered their unmasculine devotion to art; and in their comic opera
Patience
, Gilbert and Sullivan based the character Bunthorne, a “fleshly poet,” partly on Wilde.

In 1884 Wilde married Constance Lloyd, daughter of a prominent Irish barrister; two children, Cyril and Vyvyan, were born, in 1885 and 1886. Meanwhile, Wilde was a reviewer for the
Pall Mall Gazette
and then became editor of
Woman's World
(1887–89).

In the final decade of his life, Wilde wrote and published nearly all of his major works. In his only novel,
The Picture of Dorian Gray
(published in
Lippincott's Magazine
, 1890, and in book form, revised and expanded by six chapters, 1891), Wilde combined the supernatural elements of the Gothic novel with the unspeakable sins of French decadent fiction. Critics charged immorality despite Dorian's self-destruction; Wilde, however, insisted on the amoral nature of art regardless of an apparently moral ending. Several volumes of essays, stories, and fairy tales also were published in 1891.

But Wilde's greatest successes were his society comedies. Within the conventions of the French “well-made play” (with its social intrigues and artificial devices to resolve conflict), he employed his paradoxical, epigrammatic wit to create a form of comedy new to the 19th-century English theatre. His first success,
Lady Windermere's Fan
, demonstrated that this wit could revitalize the rusty
machinery of French drama. In the same year, rehearsals of his macabre play
Salomé
, written in French and designed, as he said, to make his audience shudder by its depiction of unnatural passion, were halted by the censor because it contained biblical characters. It was published in 1893, and an English translation appeared in 1894 with Aubrey Beardsley's celebrated illustrations.

A second society comedy,
A Woman of No Importance
, was produced in 1893. In rapid succession, Wilde's final plays,
An Ideal Husband
and
The Importance of Being Earnest
, were produced early in 1895. In the latter, his greatest achievement, the conventional elements of farce are transformed into satiric epigrams—seemingly trivial but mercilessly exposing Victorian hypocrisies:

I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy
.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train
.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his
.

In many of his works, exposure of a secret sin or indiscretion and consequent disgrace is a central design. If life imitated art, as Wilde insisted in his essay “The Decay of Lying” (1889), he was himself approximating the pattern in his reckless pursuit of pleasure. In addition, his close friendship with Lord Alfred Douglas, whom he had met in 1891, infuriated the Marquess of Queensberry, Douglas's father. Accused, finally, by the marquess of being a sodomite, Wilde, urged by Douglas, sued for criminal libel. Wilde's case collapsed, however, when the evidence went against him, and he dropped the suit. Urged to flee to
France by his friends, Wilde refused, unable to believe that his world was at an end. He was arrested and ordered to stand trial.

Wilde testified brilliantly, but the jury failed to reach a verdict. In the retrial he was found guilty and sentenced, in May 1895, to two years at hard labour. Most of his sentence was served at Reading Gaol, where he wrote a long letter to Douglas (published in 1905 in a drastically cut version as
De Profundis
) filled with recriminations against the younger man for encouraging him in dissipation and distracting him from his work. In May 1897 Wilde was released and immediately went to France, hoping to regenerate himself as a writer. His only remaining work, however, was
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
(1898), revealing his concern for inhumane prison conditions. He died suddenly of acute meningitis brought on by an ear infection. In his semiconscious final moments, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church, which he had long admired.

(b. Oct. 20, 1854, Charleville, France—d. Nov. 10, 1891, Marseille)

A
rthur Rimbaud was a French poet and adventurer who won renown among the Symbolist movement and markedly influenced modern poetry.

The provincial son of an army captain, he had begun by age 16 to write violent, blasphemous poems, and he formulated an aesthetic doctrine stating that a poet must become a seer, break down the restraints and controls on personality, and thus become the instrument for the voice of the eternal. At the end of August 1871, on the advice of a friend, Rimbaud sent to the poet Paul Verlaine samples of his new poetry. Verlaine, impressed by their brilliance, summoned Rimbaud to Paris and sent the money for his fare. In a burst of self-confidence, Rimbaud composed
Le Bateau ivre
(written 1871; “The Drunken Boat”), perhaps his finest poem, which displays his astonishing verbal virtuosity and a daring choice of images and metaphors. Once in Paris, he embarked upon a life of drink and debauchery, becoming involved in a homosexual relationship with Verlaine that gave rise to scandal. The two men were soon being seen in public as lovers, and Rimbaud was blamed for breaking up Verlaine's marriage.