Impressions of America by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde visited America in the year 1882. Interest in the Esthetic School, of which he was already the acknowledged master, had sometime previously spread to the United States, and it is said that the production of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, “Patience,” in which he and his disciples were held up to ridicule, determined him to pay a visit to the States to give some lectures explaining what he meant by Estheticism, hoping thereby to interest, and possibly to instruct and elevate our transatlantic cousins.