Home | John Cooper on Oscar Wilde © 2026

Lecture Tour of America 1882

Writing and Research on Oscar Wilde

Toronto

Ontario


Grand Opera House

 Thursday, May 25, 1882


The Decorative Arts

< Previous Lecture

Next Lecture >

Verification

Newspaper listings

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 26, 1882

The New York Mirror, c. June 1882


Newspaper report

The Toronto Globe, May 26, 1882


"The audience listened very attentively throughout..."


Quoted in Oscar Wilde in Canada, Kevin O'Brien, 1882


ERRATA

Complete Letters * (p172) says Wilde lectured this day in the Art Schools at Toronto. However, based on several newspapers reports of Wilde movements, Kevin O'Brien in Oscar Wilde in Canada (1882) appears to be correct that Wilde only chatted informally with students at the Institution Exhibition.


* Holland, Merlin and and Hart-Davis, Rupert, Eds. The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, London: Fourth Estate; New York: Henry Holt, 2000.

Venue

Grand Opera House

11 Adelaide Street West, Toronto, ON (south side between Yonge and Bay Streets, now 40 King Street West)


Opened: 1874

Seating capacity: 1750

Partially destroyed (fire): 1879 and rebuilt

Demolished: 1927

Accommodation

Queen's Hotel

NE corner of Front and York Streets, Toronto, ON (now 100 Front Street West)


Original residential buildings: 1844

Buildings combined: 1856 (as Sword’s Hotel)

Expanded until: 1862 (as Queen's Hotel)

Closed: September 10, 1927

Demolished: 1927

Replaced by: The Royal York Hotel (opened June 11, 1929, extant)

Ephemera


Location of the Grand Opera House at 11 Adelaide Street West, (south side between Yonge and Bay Streets, now 40 King Street West)


—Miles' Atlas, 1878—


John Cooper on Oscar Wilde © 2026