SOURCE: Mackie, W. Craven. “Bunbury Pure and Simple.” Modern Drama 41, no. 2 (summer 1998): 327-30.

In the following essay, Mackie proposes the obituaries as a source for the name Bunbury, a character in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.

Sometime in late July 1894 Oscar Wilde wrote to George Alexander requesting an advance of £150 so that he might go away to write a comedy. In that letter he outlines a scenario of the play that within a month and a half would become a rough draft of The Importance of Being Earnest. In this early untitled version the names of Jack Worthing, Algernon, Cecily, Gwendolen and Lady Bracknell have yet to be invented. There is yet no play upon the word earnest and no Bunbury.¹

By early August, only a few days after writing to Alexander, Wilde had traveled with his family from London to the seaside resort of Worthing in...