Merlin Holland | |
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| Born | December 1945 (age 78) London, England |
| Children | 1 |
| Parent |
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| Relatives | Oscar Wilde (paternal grandfather) Constance Lloyd (paternal grandmother) |
Christopher Merlin Vyvyan Holland (born December 1945) is a British biographer and editor. He is the only grandchild of Oscar Wilde, whose life he has researched and written about extensively.
Born in London in December 1945, [1] Christopher Merlin Vyvyan Holland is the son of the author Vyvyan Holland and his second wife, Thelma Besant. [2] He is the only grandchild of Oscar Wilde and Constance Lloyd. [3] [4]
His mother Thelma was an Australian cosmetician who became the personal beauty adviser to Queen Elizabeth II for about 10 years from the mid-1940s. [5] His paternal grandmother, Constance, had changed her and her children's surname to Holland (an old family name) in 1895, after Wilde had been convicted of homosexual acts and imprisoned, in order to gain some privacy for the boys and distance from the scandal.
Holland has studied and researched Wilde's life for more than thirty years. [3] He is the co-editor, with Rupert Hart-Davis, of The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. [4] [6] He is the editor of Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess, the first uncensored version of his grandfather's 1895 trials. (The book is titled The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde for release in the US.) [7]
Holland has criticised Richard Ellmann's 1987 biography, Oscar Wilde, as inaccurate, particularly his claim that Wilde had syphilis and transmitted it to Constance. [4] [8] According to The Guardian , Holland has "unearthed medical evidence within private family letters, which has enabled a doctor to determine the likely cause of Constance's death. The letters reveal symptoms nowadays associated with multiple sclerosis but apparently wrongly diagnosed by her two doctors. One, an unnamed German 'nerve doctor', resorted to dubious remedies and the other, Luigi Maria Bossi, conducted a botched operation that days later claimed her life." [9]
Holland has also written The Wilde Album, a small volume that included hitherto unpublished photographs of Wilde. [6] [10] The book focuses on how the scandal caused by Wilde's trials affected his family, most notably his wife, Constance, and their children, Cyril and Vyvyan.
In 2006, his book Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters was published, and his volume Coffee with Oscar Wilde , an imagined conversation with Wilde, was released in the autumn of 2007. [3] Holland also wrote A Portrait of Oscar Wilde (2008), which reveals Wilde through manuscripts and letters from the Lucia Moreira Salles collection, located at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. [3]
In addition, Holland has also worked as a wine writer and occasionally written features for Country Life, and The Oldie . [3]
In July 2013, Holland gave the keynote address for a symposium on Oscar Wilde presented by The Santa Fe Opera. The address surveyed the popular and critical attitudes towards Wilde and his work from the end of his life to the present day. The symposium was given in conjunction with the opera company's world premiere presentations of Oscar , composed by Theodore Morrison with a libretto written by John Cox and the composer. [11]
Holland's play The Trials of Oscar Wilde, co-authored with John O'Connor and re-enacting the 1895 trials of Lord Queensberry for libel and Oscar Wilde for gross indecency, toured the United Kingdom in 2014 in a production by the European Arts Company. [12] [13]
Holland lives in Burgundy, France, with his second wife. His son, Lucian Holland (born 1979 to Merlin's first wife Sarah), studied classics at Magdalen College, Oxford. [4] He occupied rooms that his great-grandfather Wilde had occupied. Lucian is a computer programmer, living in London.[ citation needed ]
Merlin Holland briefly toyed with the idea of changing his name back to Wilde. He told The New York Times in 1998, “But if I did it, it would have to be not just for Oscar, but for his father and mother, too, for the whole family. It was an extraordinary family before he came along, so if I put the family name back on the map for the right reasons, then it's all right.” [10]
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 his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
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 conformity. Some contemporary reviews praised the play's humour as 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.
John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, was a British nobleman of the Victorian era, remembered for his atheism, his outspoken views, his brutish manner, for lending his name to the "Queensberry Rules" that form the basis of modern boxing, and for his role in the downfall of the Irish author and playwright Oscar Wilde.
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.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1895.
Cyril Holland was the older of the two sons of Oscar Wilde and Constance Lloyd and brother to Vyvyan Holland.
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.
Events from the year 1895 in Ireland.
The Trials of Oscar Wilde, also known as The Man with the Green Carnation and The Green Carnation, is a 1960 British drama film based on the libel and subsequent criminal cases involving Oscar Wilde and the Marquess of Queensberry. It was written by Allen and Ken Hughes, directed by Hughes, and co-produced by Irving Allen, Albert R. Broccoli and Harold Huth. The screenplay was by Ken Hughes and Montgomery Hyde, based on an unperformed play The Stringed Lute by John Furnell. The film was made by Warwick Films and released by Eros Films.
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.
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 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.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Events from the year 1895 in the United Kingdom.
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".
Reginald Turner was an English author, an aesthete and a member of the circle of Oscar Wilde. He worked as a journalist, wrote twelve novels, and his correspondence has been published, but he is best known as one of the few friends who remained loyal to Wilde when he was imprisoned and who supported him after his release.
Oscar Wilde's life and death have generated numerous biographies.
Oscar Wilde's tomb is located in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France. It took nine to ten months to complete by the sculptor Jacob Epstein, with an accompanying plinth by Charles Holden and an inscription carved by Joseph Cribb.
Luigi Maria Bossi was a gynecologist and Italian politician.
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