Oscar Wilde reads from "Ballad Of Reading Gaol"

Is this voice of Oscar Wilde? This is not recording from some spiritual medium, but from old cylinder.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Oscar
• Wilde
• Ballad
• Of
• Reading
• Gaol
• voice
• cylinder
• tin
• foil

[Lucius1958]

If I recall correctly, this recording came from the same 'collector' who came up with the spurious Walt Whitman recording......

[doloreshaze1935]

@Lucius1958 if you have some more info please write....but this is not some ghost voice, it suppose to be real.

[karlsalz]

it was recorded in 1898

[doloreshaze1935]

@karlsalz hi thanks for comment, I have put one other short video about Oscar in Paris where I showed parts from Montgomery Hyde book about Oscar that he was in Paris expo and recorded his voice in 1900.

[MessiRK]

Are there absolutely no video recordings of Wilde? I know that in the last years of the 19th century film'rolls' were introduced, so i'm just wondering about it. It would be so fascinating to see him move.

[doloreshaze1935]

@MessiRK I will send you notification when I will put this video in a day or so

[interstellarmonkey]

most likely not authentic; in addition to his own son's avowal that it couldn't be Wilde, the "analysis of the technical aspects enabled us to get beyond the existing debate and its reliance on memory to the internal evidence that the original recording could not have been a cylinder and could not have been recorded as early as 1900. Oscar Wilde died in that year: it could not be his voice on the recording." (© The British Library) heartbreaking i know.

[petergf1558]

The British Institute of recorded sound proved that this was false years ago. Background hiss is a flat record (a "78"). Records in1900 were cylinders. Hiss & voice are different sound signatures. In 1900 speakers had to declaim into a horn. Intimate speech was impossible to record. The voice seems to be that of an actor. Dypthong pronunciation of "Reading Te-own" is remarkably like a mannerism of Robert Morley, who played Wilde on stage in the 1939 & later on film.

[EmmetEarwax]

And in Readiing Gaol, the brute wardens would patrol the exercise yard to find and destroy any flowers that dared sprout, lest they give the prisoners any hope or joy in the world ...

[darkieschmuckie]

It sounds completely American. I would have presumed Wilde would have a hint (at the least) of an Irish accent seeing as he was of that origin. It doesn't even sound remotely 'British' in origin.

[krane121]

Go listen to the voice of a really great artist--Robert Browning!

[RisaClowde]

I could believe that it was him. As to the matter of his accent, supposedly it lost much of its "Irishness" during the many years that he spent in England. Even when he first arrived at Oxford, it was noticeable but not incredibly thick. It would be awesome to know for sure, though...

[FriedEggsWithChips]

@interstellarmonkey Apart from all that he was Irish and I don't hear a whisper of an Irish accent here.

[Lirico96]

It would be great if it was really his voice

[ItchythaWookiee]

@Lucius1958 Nonsense. It was mentioned in the biography by Mongtomery Hyde.