Public School of Industrial Art (Hollingsworth School)

Oscar Wilde made a second trip to Philadelphia to lecture in May 1882. He visited this site, the Public School of Industrial Art, which was headed by founding director Charles Godfrey Leland. Leland had visited London and was influenced by William Morris—mentioned by Wilde in his first Philadelphia lecture (see stop #8)—one of the leading lights of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which succeeded Wilde’s Aestheticism in adding the edge of social criticism to creative production. Leland’s niece, Elizabeth Robbins, a critic and journalist, was married to Joseph Pennell (see stop #5), who studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, but later became a disciple of J. M. Whistler and friend of Wilde’s.