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Oscar Wilde's life and death have generated numerous biographies.
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Oscar Wilde's life and death have generated numerous biographies.
Lord Alfred Douglas wrote two books about his relationship with Wilde: Oscar Wilde and Myself (1914), largely ghost-written by T.W.H. Crosland, vindictively reacted to Douglas's discovery that De Profundis was addressed to him and defensively tried to distance him from Wilde's scandalous reputation. Both authors later regretted their work. [1] Later, in Oscar Wilde: A Summing Up (1940) and his Autobiography he was more sympathetic to Wilde. An account of the argument between Frank Harris, Lord Alfred Douglas and Oscar Wilde as to the advisability of Wilde's prosecuting Queensberry can be found in the preface to George Bernard Shaw's play The Dark Lady of the Sonnets . Frank Harris made his own contribution in a full-length memoir, Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions (1916), which is considered very readable but not entirely reliable. [2] In 1954 Vyvyan Holland published his memoir Son of Oscar Wilde, the story of his education after his father's disgrace and imprisonment. It was revised and updated by Merlin Holland in 1989. André Gide, on whom Wilde had such a strange effect, wrote, In Memoriam, Oscar Wilde; Wilde also features in his journals. [3] Thomas Louis, who had earlier translated books on Wilde into French, produced his own L'esprit d'Oscar Wilde in 1920. [4]
In 1962, Wilde's letters were first published, edited by Rupert Hart-Davis. Merlin Holland revised it and included new discoveries in The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde (Merlin Holland & Rupert Hart-Davis. (2000). Henry Holt and Company LLC, New York. ISBN 0-8050-5915-6). In 1997 Merlin Holland published The Wilde Album. This small volume of pictures, images, and other Wilde memorabilia, drew on previously unpublished archives. It includes all 27 portraits taken by Napoleon Sarony in New York in 1882. In 2003 Merlin Holland edited the uncensored transcripts of Wilde's trials for publication. The book contained a 50-page introduction by Merlin Holland, and a foreword by John Mortimer QC. It was published as Irish Peacock and Scarlett Marquess: The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde in the UK, and as simply The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde in some other countries.
In 1912 Arthur Ransome published Oscar Wilde, a critical study, a literary study of Wilde. This briefly mentioned Wilde's life, but resulted in Ransome (and The Times Book Club) being sued for libel by Lord Alfred Douglas; a trial in April 1913 which in a way was a re-run of the trial(s) of Oscar Wilde. The trial resulted from Douglas's rivalry with Robbie Ross for Wilde (and his need for money). Douglas lost; De Profundis which was read in part at the trial disproved his claims. [13]
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for gross indecency for consensual homosexual acts in "one of the first celebrity trials", imprisonment, and early death from meningitis at the age of 46.
The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae to escape burdensome social obligations. Working within the social conventions of late Victorian London, the play's major themes are the triviality with which it treats institutions as serious as marriage and the resulting satire of Victorian ways. Some contemporary reviews praised the play's humour and the culmination of Wilde's artistic career, while others were cautious about its lack of social messages. Its high farce and witty dialogue have helped make The Importance of Being Earnest an enduringly popular play.
Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas, also known as Bosie Douglas, was an English poet and journalist, and a lover of Oscar Wilde. At Oxford he edited an undergraduate journal, The Spirit Lamp, that carried a homoerotic subtext, and met Wilde, starting a close but stormy relationship. Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, abhorred it and set out to humiliate Wilde, publicly accusing him of homosexuality. Wilde sued him for criminal libel, but some intimate notes were found and Wilde was later imprisoned. On his release, he briefly lived with Douglas in Naples, but they had separated by the time Wilde died in 1900. Douglas married a poet, Olive Custance, in 1902 and had a son, Raymond.
Robert Baldwin Ross was a British journalist, art critic and art dealer, best known for his relationship with Oscar Wilde, to whom he was a devoted friend and literary executor. A grandson of the Canadian reform leader Robert Baldwin, and son of John Ross and Augusta Elizabeth Baldwin, Ross was a pivotal figure on the London literary and artistic scene from the mid-1890s to his early death, and mentored several literary figures, including Siegfried Sassoon. His open homosexuality, in a period when male homosexual acts were illegal, brought him many hardships.
Sir Rupert Charles Hart-Davis was an English publisher and editor. He founded the publishing company Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd. As a biographer, he is remembered for his Hugh Walpole (1952), as an editor, for his Collected Letters of Oscar Wilde (1962), and, as both editor and part-author, for the Lyttelton/Hart-Davis Letters.
Salome is a one-act tragedy by Oscar Wilde. The original 1891 version of the play was in French; an English translation was published three years later. The play depicts the attempted seduction of Jokanaan by Salome, step-daughter of Herod Antipas; her dance of the seven veils; the execution of Jokanaan at Salome's instigation; and her death on Herod's orders.
A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde is "a new and original play of modern life", in four acts, first given on 19 April 1893 at the Haymarket Theatre, London. Like Wilde's other society plays, it satirises English upper-class society. It has been revived from time to time since his death in 1900, but has been widely regarded as the least successful of his four drawing room plays.
Wilde is a 1997 British biographical romantic drama film directed by Brian Gilbert. The screenplay, written by Julian Mitchell, is based on Richard Ellmann's 1987 biography of Oscar Wilde. The film chronicles the turmoil in Wilde's life after he discovers his homosexuality. It stars Stephen Fry in the title role, with Jude Law, Vanessa Redgrave, Jennifer Ehle, Gemma Jones, Judy Parfitt, Michael Sheen, Zoë Wanamaker, and Tom Wilkinson in supporting roles.
Richard David Ellmann, FBA was an American literary critic and biographer of the Irish writers James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and William Butler Yeats. He won the U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction for James Joyce (1959), which is one of the most acclaimed literary biographies of the 20th century. Its 1982 revised edition was similarly recognised with the award of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Ellmann was a liberal humanist, and his academic work focused on the major modernist writers of the twentieth century.
Vyvyan Beresford Holland, was an English author and translator. He was the second-born son of Irish playwright Oscar Wilde and Constance Lloyd, and had a brother, Cyril.
Christopher Merlin Vyvyan Holland is a British biographer and editor. He is the only grandchild of Oscar Wilde, whose life he has researched and written about extensively.
Constance Mary Wilde was an Irish writer. She was the wife of Irish playwright Oscar Wilde and the mother of their two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan.
The Importance of Being Oscar is a one man show devised by the soi-disant Irish actor Micheál Mac Liammóir and based on the writings of Oscar Wilde.
The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde is a book that contains over a thousand pages of letters written by Oscar Wilde. Wilde's letters were first published as The Letters of Oscar Wilde in 1963, edited by Rupert Hart-Davis and published by his publishing firm.
Francis Martin Sewell Stokes was an English novelist, biographer, playwright, screenwriter, broadcaster and prison visitor. He collaborated on a number of occasions with his brother, Leslie Stokes, an actor and later in life a BBC radio producer, with whom he shared a flat for many years overlooking the British Museum.
Oscar Wilde is a 1936 play written by Leslie and Sewell Stokes. It is based on the life of the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde in which Wilde's friend, the controversial author and journalist Frank Harris, appears as a character. The play, which contains much of Wilde's actual writings, starts with Wilde's literary success and his friendship with Lord Alfred Douglas, turns into a courtroom melodrama, and ends with Wilde as a broken alcoholic after two years in prison.
This is a bibliography of works by Oscar Wilde, a late-Victorian Irish writer. Chiefly remembered today as a playwright, especially for The Importance of Being Earnest, and as the author of The Picture of Dorian Gray; Wilde's oeuvre includes criticism, poetry, children's fiction, and a large selection of reviews, lectures and journalism. His private correspondence has also been published.
De Profundis is a letter written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment in Reading Gaol, to "Bosie".
Thomas William Hodgson Crosland was a British author, poet and journalist.
The Judas Kiss is a 1998 play by David Hare about Oscar Wilde's scandal and disgrace at the hands of his young lover Bosie.
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