Oscar Wilde / Richard Ellmann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ellmann, Richard, 1918-1987

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900.

Wilde, Oscar.

Authors, Irish--19th century--Biography.

Authors, Irish.

Genre:

Biographies.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xvii, 680 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First American edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1988.

Summary:

In this long-awaited biography, Wilde the legendary Victorian--brilliant writer and conversationalist, reckless flouter of social and sexual conventions--is brought to life. More astute and forbearing, yet more fallible than legend has allowed, Wilde is given here the dimensions of a modern hero. The author depicts Wilde's comet-like ascent on the Victorian scene and his equally dramatic sudden eclipse. He presents Wilde's Irish background, the actresses to whom he paid court, his unfortunate wife and lovers, his clothes, coiffures, and the decor of his rooms. The saga of his 1882 American tour is recounted with a wealth of new details; also his later impact on the bastions of the French literary establishment. The London of the Nineties, of Whistler and the Pre-Raphaelites, Lillie Langtry and the Prince of Wales, is evoked alongside Paris of the "belle époque" and the Greece, Italy and North Africa of Wilde's travels. This critical account of Wilde's entire oeuvre shows him as the proponent of a radical new aesthetic who was perilously at odds with Victorian society. After his period of success and daring, the fatal love affair with Lord Alfred Douglas is followed by exposure, imprisonment, a few wretched years abroad and death in exile. The tragic end of Wilde's life leaves the reader with a sense of compassion and grief for the protagonist.

Contents:

Beginnings

Toil of growing up

Wilde at Oxford

Rome and Greece

An incomplete aesthete

Advances

Setting sail

Declaring his genius

Indoctrinating America

Countering the renaissance

Two kinds of stage

Mr. and Mrs. Wilde

Exaltations

Disciple to master

The age of Dorian

Hellenizing Paris

A good woman, and others

A late victorian love affair

Sailing into the wind

Disgrace

'I am the prosecutorin this case'

Doom deferred

Pentonville, Wandsworth, and Reading

Escape from Reading

Exile

Prisoner at large

The leftover years.

Notes:

Includes index.

Bibliography: pages [623]-624.

Pulitzer Prize, 1989.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has NYT book review laid in.

ISBN:

0394554841

OCLC:

16089096