Oscar Wilde : A Life in Letters

by Holland, Merlin

• ISBN13: 9780786719075
• ISBN10: 0786719079
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-12-12
• Publisher: Perseus Books Group

Summary

Of all 19th-century letter writers, Oscar Wilde is among the greatest. Revealing him at his sparkling, spontaneous, fluent best, these letters bear that most familiar of Wildean hallmarks the lightest of touches for the most serious of subjects. He comments openly on his life and his work, from the early years of undergraduate friendship, through his year-long lecture tour in America as a striving young "Professor of Aesthetics," to the short period of fame and success in the early 1890s when he corresponded with many leading political, literary and artistic figures of the time, including William Gladstone, George Curzon, W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Frank Harris, Aubrey Beardsle and Max Beerbohm. Disgrace and imprisonment followed, but even in adversity his humor does not desert him. In this volume, Merlin Holland has brought together his most revealing letters with a helpful commentary and some previously unpublished photographs. Together they form the closest thing we have to Wilde's own memoir.

Author Biography

Merlin Holland is Oscar Wilde's grandson. His books include The Wilde Album, Irish Peacock & Scarlet Marquess and The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde.

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii
Chronological Table	xi
The Student 1868-1878	1	(34)
Charming London 1879-1881	35	(14)
Discovering America 1882	49	(22)
The Conformist Rebel 1883-1890	71	(60)
Against the Grain 1891-1895	131	(58)
The Prisoner 1895-1897	189	(46)
A Sort of Freedom 1897	235	(42)
The Second Time Around 1897-1898	277	(32)
The Final Years 1898-1900	309	(52)
Epilogue	361	(10)
Index of Recipients	371	(3)
General Index	374