‘Internationalizing Pearl Craigie’
Résumé
My presentation focuses on Pearl Craigie (aka John Oliver Hobbes), arguably a key figure of cosmopolitan fin de siècle. Born in the U.S. but educated in Britain and partly in France, Craigie became overnight famous with Some Emotions and a Moral in 1891 although the novella was published in Fisher T. Unwin’s Pseudonymous Series. In 1892 Craigie converted to Catholicism while embarking on a series of tales, plays, journalistic contributions including travelogues, and novels with a noted internationalistic vein. If her position within British Decadence is arguably debatable, her cosmopolitanism is not: from her personal networks to her literary writings including her journalistic pieces Craigie exemplifies fin de siècle international outlook. My presentation will be devoted to assessing her place within the journalistic field through her travelogues and prose writings, to exploring the cosmopolitan dimension of her stories and plays and finally to assessing the role her conversion to Catholicism played in her cosmopolitanism. A distinguished woman writer in the turn of the century, Craigie stands at the crossroads of different aspects usually associated with Decadence and may therefore contribute to a further appreciation of that many-faceted movement including its Transatlantic vein. A staunch opponent to women’s rights and a divorcée, a supporter of empires and imperialism, and a satirist, Craigie cuts a singular but not an eccentric or antinomian figure in British fin de siècle literary map.