On Saturday, June 3rd at 7:00 p.m. in the Wright Chapel of the Lakewood Presbyterian Church WordStage Literary Concerts presents an intriguing program about the visits Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker made (on separate occasions) to the then controversial American Poet Walt Whitman.    

Wilde was on a yearlong tour of various cities in the United States sent by Richard D’Oyly Carte, the producer of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas in Britain and America.  Their latest creation, “Patience” which spoofed the heightened fashion of the Aesthetic Movement was personified by Wilde. The 27-year-old Wilde accepted a generous offer to do a tour where he would expound on the principles of aestheticism, largely because it afforded him the possibility of meeting Whitman, who, Wilde felt, was America’s greatest poet and self-promoter nonpareil.   

Several years later, Bram Stoker, who was the manager of the great actor Henry Irving’s Lyceum Theater was arranging a tour of several American cities, and he seized the opportunity to book performances in Philadelphia, largely so he would visit his literary idol, Whitman who lived just across the river in Camden, New Jersey. Stoker had already written letters to Whitman and had become a champion of Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” which, even in a highly edited edition, caused great controversy in Britain.

The conversations between these men gives a fascinating glimpse into the craft of literary creation, the manufacturing of a public persona and the celebration of sensuality in poetry, the arts and in life.    

For tickets and information visit our website at www.wordstageoh.org or call 440-857-0717.