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Nebraska
University Hall
Monday, April 24, 1882 (Morning)
Address To Students
Newspaper reports
The Weekly Nebraska State Journal, April 28, 1882, 8
Chicago Daily Tribune, April 25, 1882, 7
A short, impromptu talk, not advertised nor scheduled. It qualifies as a formal lecture owing to its setting and didactic content.
University Hall
11th and R Streets, Lincoln, NE now 920, O Street, Lincoln, NE
Built: 1869—1871
First class: September 1871
Premises: At the time of Wilde's visit, University Hall was the first and then still only building of the State University. It housed administration, a recitation hall, student classes, a boys' dormitory, the library, and a chapel (where Wilde gave his address).
Declared unsafe: 1925, after years of concern. That year the top two stories were removed.
Last class: May 21, 1948
Demolished: 1948
Source:
HISTORICAL IMAGES OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY BUILDING
Picture credit: Archive Images of Lincoln Nebraska
Oscar Unknowingly Glimpses His Future
After his visit to the University, Wilde was taken to the state penitentiary and asylum across town.
He wrote to Helena Sickert about the visit the following day from his next lecture stop in Fremont, NE. In the letter, Wilde reported the whitewashed cells, hideous dress and manual labor of the prisoners, unknowingly presaging the circumstances of his own incarceration years later in Reading Gaol, where Wilde also was to fear for his sanity.
In prison, Wilde had requested reading matter including the works of Dante. which he read in full. One observation in his letter about the Lincoln penitentiary strikingly anticipated his own future experience in Reading Gaol; he wrote:
In one [cell] I found a translation of Dante, and a Shelley. Strange and beautiful it seemed to me that the sorrow of a single Florentine in exile should, hundreds of years afterwards, lighten the sorrow of some common prisoner in a modern gaol.
(Letters, p. 165)
Oscar Wilde In America | © John Cooper, 2025
