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Aet. 41, to a Scottish drama critic. George Moore’s play The Strike at Arlingford was staged by the Independent Theatre Society (February 1893) and published by Walter Scott (June 1893).

William Archer reviewed Oscar Wilde’s play A Woman of No Importance  in the World (26 April 1893). In Act II, Lord Illingworth and Mrs. Arbuthnot discussed differing parental claims on their son Gerald. The scene is similar to Chapter 25 of George’s novel Esther Waters (1894); the scene summarized at the end of this letter appeared in Chapter 26.

As Oscar Wilde wrote A Woman of No Importance in 1892, his friend John Gray’s translation of Théodore de Banville’s Le Baiser was produced by the Independent Theatre Society, in the same program as The Minister’s Call, a play by Arthur Symons and George Moore.