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This LIFE magazine photo of Oscar Wilde’s home at 34 Tite Street, Chelsea, is fascinating for Wilde aficionados in being a far more detailed view of the “House Beautiful” exterior than one ever finds in books about the writer. No information as to when it was taken but from the look of the print it was probably some time just before or after 1900.

Google Earth lets us examine Tite Street as it is today, with Oscar’s house looking relatively unchanged aside from the blue plaque which informs people that he once lived there. What you can’t see in this picture is the opposite side of the street which now contains a particularly dreary housing development from the 1960s. Oscar and his contemporaries in the area—many of whom were artists—wouldn’t have been impressed at all.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Wildeana
• Through the Wonderwall
• Uranian inspirations
• Henry Keen’s Dorian Gray
• The real Basil Hallwards
• Dallamano’s Dorian Gray
• Oscar Wilde playing cards
• Matthew Bourne’s Dorian Gray
• John Osborne’s Dorian Gray
• Dorian Gray revisited
• The Picture of Dorian Gray I & II