Psychic Messages from Oscar Wilde
Hester Travers Smith
London: T.W. Laurie,, [1923?]
[H.P.L.] Smith

This is a commercially published volume of messages received seemingly from the spirit of Oscar Wilde after his death; to a non-believing eye, it reads as an uncomfortable pastiche of Wilde’s voice. The recorded voice avoids discussing his literary work in any detail, though it somewhat surprisingly contains a damning critique of Joyce’s Ulysses. When the voice mentions Wilde’s queerness or his trial, it is tinged with regret and a confusion at his own actions. Given that Wilde was broken by societal attitudes towards gay love, it seems inescapably cruel to then portray him as a briefly misguided heterosexual.