Truly Wilde: The Unsettling Story Of Dolly Wilde, Oscar's Unusual Niece

by Joan Schenkar

A "born writer" who never completed the creative life promised by her famous name and gorgeous imagination, Dolly Wilde was charged with charm, brilliantly witty, changeable as refracting light, and loaded with sexual allure. She made her career in the salons and in the bedrooms of some of London's and Paris' most interesting women and men.

Attracting people of taste and talent wherever she went, she drenched her prodigious talents in liquids and chemicals, burnt up her opportunities in flamboyant affairs, and created continuous sensations by the ways in which she seemed to be re-living the life of her infamous uncle.

In this revolutionary and very modern biography, Joan Schenkar provides a fascinating look at what it means to live with the talents but not the achievements of biography's usual subjects; those obliterating "winners" like Dolly's uncle Oscar whose stories have almost erased riveting histories like Dolly's own. And she uncovers never-before-published evidence of the hidden life of the Wilde family and of the extraordinary salon society of Natalie Clifford Barney, Dolly Wilde's longest and most fatal attachment.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Biography Memoir, LGBT, Queer, Gay

400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

JOAN SCHENKAR has been called "America's most original female contemporary playwright." TRULY WILDE, her biography of Oscar's interesting niece Dolly Wilde, was hailed as "a revelation, the great story of a life and of the creation of modern culture." THE TALENTED MISS HIGHSMITH has already been acclaimed as the "definitive" Highsmith biography.

As a child actor in Seattle, Schenkar made many television and stage appearances (one of them was with Everett Edward Horton) and was a touring member of the corps de ballet of The Cornish Ballet Company. She wrote her first play while living in The Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan.

The recipient of more than forty grants, fellowships, and awards for her "comedies of menace" (including seven National Endowment for the Arts grants), Schenkar has been reviewed in every major (and many minor) newspaper in the English-speaking theatre world. She has been playwright-in-residence in universities, artists' colonies, as well as in such experimental theatre companies as Joseph Chaikin’s Winter Project, The Polish Laboratory Theatre, and The Minnesota Opera New Music Theatre Ensemble. She is an alumna of New Dramatists, and a current member of The Authors Guild, Societe des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques, PEN, The Dramatists’ Guild, and The Brontë Society. She was founder and artistic director of Force Majeure Productions in New York City. The London theatre company, SIGNS OF LIFE THEATRE, was named after her play and a road in Pownal, Vermont has been named after her. She has an ABD in English and American literature and aesthetics.

Her published plays include one of the most widely-produced and studied plays in the history of theatre written by women, SIGNS OF LIFE. She has had more than five hundred productions of her work on stage, radio, and video, including the following plays: CABIN FEVER, SIGNS OF LIFE, THE LODGER, BUCKS AND DOES, MR. MONSTER, THE LAST OF HITLER, BETWEEN THE ACTS, HUNTING DOWN THE SEXES, FULFILLING KOCH’S POSTULATE, FAMILY PRIDE IN THE 50’s, FIRE IN THE FUTURE, THE UNIVERSAL WOLF, BURNING DESIRES.

Feature articles about JOAN SCHENKAR’s work have appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times,The Village Voice, The Washington Post, The Denver Post, and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She is the subject of articles and interviews in such scholarly and theatrical journals as: TDR, Theatre Journal, PAJ, Modern Drama, Women and Performance, Michigan Quarterly Review, Studies in American Drama, Alternatives Theatrales, and Feminist Re-visions. Her short stories have been published in several anthologies.

SIGNS OF LIFE: Six Comedies of Menace, a collection of her plays, was published in 1998 and was a Wesleyan University Press best-seller. TRULY WILDE: the unsettling story of Dolly Wilde, Oscar’s unusual niece was published by Basic Books/​Perseus in New York, Virago Press/​Little Brown in London and RandomHouse/​ Mondadori in Barcelona in 2000 and 2001 and was a finalist for The Lamda Literary Award. Her latest work –- a literary biography of Patricia Highsmith, THE TALENTED MISS HIGHSMITH: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith -- has just been published by St Martin's Press (New York), and will be published by Diogenes Verlag (Zurich), and Circe Press (Barcelona) in 2010.

JOAN SCHENKAR lives and writes in Paris and Greenwich Village.

Reviews

[Lord Beardsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've returned to this book several times over the years. Ever since I first read this, I have been captivated by the life of Dolly Wilde and this book captured the personality of a person of who so few things are really known that I find that alone remarkable. She was fascinating and tragic. An artist of the spoken word who in another era might have become a public figure worshiped like Margaret Cho or other witty women. She was involved in the Natalie Clifford Barney salon of the 1920s in Paris as well as the decadent and bitchy lesbian scene that revolved around it. She was in many ways the female, lesbian, flapper version of her decadent uncle and died a similar tragic death in her mid-40s.

[Jennybeast · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dear Joan Schenkar,

believe it or not, people who read biographies do anticipate a certain amount of imagining how things were. You don't need to tell us about it at length over and over again. The life of Dolly Wilde seems like it is full and fascinating -- lesbians, famous relatives, bewitching beauty and an unexplained death. How you've managed to make that boring is beyond me, but you sure did. Better luck next time.

[Suzanne Stroh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book about a fascinating life that went "noticed but unrecorded" gets five stars from me as a writer, on the merits of its bold, experimental structure and style which Dolly Wilde would have taken seriously. That shows a respect for the subject, combined with a gutsiness, that is to the biographer's credit.

As a reader, I rate it differently. This review explains why.

The biographer was clearly in service to the subject in a way much more profound than one reviewer here dismissed when calling the book a "glorified obituary." Her service to the reader is also to be taken seriously, but it will not always be appreciated, as I try to explain below.

I like Jesse Kornbluth's very positive review dealing mostly with who Dolly was and why we should care...the one that turned up on my Kindle when I downloaded this book. But I wasn't able to find it on Amazon. If you can find it, you might enjoy that review.

Another element worthy of praise is the novelistic one. Novelistic passages in biography are always bad unless the author lives and breathes with her subject. They get worse when the author clearly doesn't understand her subject or its milieu. Later, they can become downright embarrassing if or when it becomes clear that the biographer gets facts wrong, misses key facts, or has (perhaps through no fault of her own) been prevented from knowing them. This is a case where hidden facts do, in fact, affect the life story Schenkar set out to tell. What's remarkable is, this biography does not suffer very much from it, and again, I credit the author's talent. She was able to plumb the depths of her subject--and get it right--even with few facts at her disposal. This biographer clearly lived, breathed and understood her subject. As a result, passages like this are not only fun to read, but they are true: "Before falling in love with Natalie Barney, Dolly had been able to forget herself whenever she wanted."

So why do you see three stars at the top of my review? Well I've only given Sybille Bedford's best novel four stars, which shows either that (a) I have no idea how to rate good reads or (b) I am trying my best to weigh my experience properly for this forum, knowing that writers read differently than readers who don't write. And although well worth it, and in spite of the delightful rive gauche walk through Paris that Schenkar opens the book with (I really felt I was walking alongside Dolly, fresh as a daisy, what an unforgettable stroll!), this wasn't an easy biography to read.

Do you know the expression, "A man's man?" Well, in her milieu between the wars, Dolly Wilde was a woman's woman. Arresting, irresistible, scintillating, attention-getting and jealousy-producing.

In the spirit of her subject, Schenkar has delivered a biographer's biography. Yes, it's about someone you'll never forget. Someone you won't be able to read about elsewhere. But it is experimental, like its subject herself. The book is actually "bum's-out-the-window," risk-takingly experimental, as my university mentor would say.

It dispenses with chronology in lieu of taking a thematic approach, and it is uniquely inventive. It dares to publish a palmist's reading of Wilde's hand, for instance, which the author has been ridiculed for. But the decision is as internally consistent as it is entertaining. Besides, Schenkar's subjects all indulged in as much palmistry as possible. (Pun fully intended.) The best biographers reject no workable material. I know of writers going much further afield than the psychic for analysis. The crticism of Schenkar in this regard is hypocritical--if you truly appreciate the art and craft of life writing.

If you don't and you just want a straightforward read, then this book won't be for you. It teaches you as much about writing and reading--for better or for worse, in sickness and in health--as it teaches about the subject. It is designed and built by a seriously clever mind. And that is rare these days.

And then there's Dolly Wilde. Less of an enigma, perhaps, to us than she was to those who loved her (excepting Honey Harris, who steals all her scenes under Schenkar's deft treatment of Harris's friendship with Wilde). Maybe we are the first generation to really "get" Dolly, now that there's been a Bowlby and an attachment theory...and the novels of Edward St. Aubyn...and now that most of us know or can learn about the realities of drug dependency and heroin addiction.

I recently re-read, in Richard Ellman's standard Wilde biography, Robbie Ross's terrible, moving account of the last hours and minutes of the life of Oscar Wilde, and it struck me how similar his death was to his niece's in key respects. Both were painful and undignified. Both took place in hotel rooms. Both died penniless. But Oscar Wilde died in the care of a man who loved him. Dolly Wilde died alone--or else she was left for dead.

Dolly Wilde's unfulfilled promise seems legitimately artistic today. We understand, now, what Lady Slane felt alone in understanding in All Passion Spent. Artists of appreciation are no less gifted than artists of achievement. Natalie Barney herself aimed to make her life into a poem; Dolly Wilde actually did it.

"Well..." Barney would say, wary of sharing the limelight, "perhaps. But they were different poems."

Indeed. Wilde's omitted the laundry lists, the itineraries, the hotel bills, the thank you notes.

In any case I read Wilde's life as less of a failure than it seemed at the time to Natalie or Janet Flanner or Lily de Gramont, to take three women who apparently appreciated and/or loved (and were flummoxed by) Dolly.

As a reader, I kept wishing I could have spent more time with her during the horrors of war, when she clearly came into her own. (I admit, however, to a failure of imagination where Toughie Carstairs is concerned. How did those two ever get together?) So much of what happened during wartime, as much if not more as what had gone before, might have lifted some of the mist...the mystery that Dolly remains because of gaps in the record that even Schenkar, with her forensic gifts, could not fill.

What we get with Truly Wilde, in the end, is a glimpse into the future of biography, just as we get in books by Diana Souhami, who, since her own book about Dolly and her milieu, Wild Girls, has started to incorporate fiction to flesh out meaning where a credible and thorough biographer cannot fill crucial gaps in the historical record. It makes me wonder what materials future biographers will be working with. Or even presenting.

In the future, will we still reckon intellectual, and to some extent cultural, history knowing that many key players lived noticed but unrecorded lives? Won't television, film, internet and radio capture and memorialize all but the most reclusive literary, musical, artistic and conversational geniuses--even the girlfriends, the boyfriends and the young suicides like Elliot Smith? Won't future biographers know much more about "minor" thinkers and talkers and performers like Fran Liebowitz, John Waters, Susan Sontag, Candace Bergen, Carrie Fisher, Margaret Cho, Gore Vidal and so many others who make major contributions but do not (did not) produce enough books, plays or films to satisfy accepted criteria for a "productive artist" of major rank? I wonder.

Take this example of how Truly Wilde stays with me. Somebody just sent me a weblink to Rory Kennedy's filmed conversation with her cousin's aunt, Lee Radziwill, and I was riveted. Lee Radziwill: no rebel, she. No intellect of the first order. Hardly. Yet it was the radical, practiced artistry that Radziwill invested in her spoken words--something Kennedy knew how to bring out--it was her conversation, that caught me and held me. Kennedy had searched for and captured something I hadn't expected, something I don't see or hear in the general media--something that only gifted biographers usually capture. It wasn't a fact or a topic. It was an atmosphere. And it carried the faintest scent of the atmosphere that Schenkar has also captured, however fleetingly, around the radical Dolly Wilde.

Kennedy's filmed chat with Radziwill: was it biography--the kind of biography of Wilde as a scintillating conversationalist that we wish Schenkar could have offered up alongside the palmist's reading as "proof of life"? Or is the perfect interview merely a document, a tool of biography to be interpreted? Will we have more, or fewer, of these rare, captured moments on film that reveal entire characters and outlooks in a gesture, a glance, a tossed off remark, a refusal to answer? Or was the Kennedy interview a fluke, and will these revelations remain largely the domain of talented authors: biographers and novelists?

One thing's for sure. The camera will still miss many worthy lesbian subjects, particularly from privileged backgrounds who guard their privacy. I am not sure how that gap will ever be bridged. For cultural icons in the era before television, at least we have Joan Schenkar, who has given us Dolly Wilde.

[Corinne Van · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a weird, somewhat interesting, but mostly tedious and almost surreal book about Dolly Wilde, Oscar Wilde's niece. The author seems infatuated with her and has written hundreds of pages describing the possibilities of her wit and intellect where, in fact, she appears to have never done anything except run around with the fast crowd of Paris and London in the 20's, 30's—-oh and she was one of Natalie Barney's lovers—-in competition with Romaine Brooks—-so that's interesting, of course, but the lengthy analyses of Dolly's addictions and unhappiness and unproductive life proved quite tedious for me after awhile. I kept reading because I kept thinking there must be something more to the book but, when I finished, I realized that there was not.

[BadassCmd · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Pale lunar enchantress. You compel my imagination, make turmoil of my thoughts and every night I miss your lover’s attentions - what else is love?"
- Dorothy Wilde for Natalie Barney

I am really happy the internet helped me find out about Dolly Wilde, an extraordinary and fascinating and also tragic figure of queer and cultural history.

When Dolly was 19 she sent her parents a telegram saying she’d go sailing.
Instead she took off with a group of female ambulance drivers on their way to the World War 1 battle fields of France. She lived with 4 women in an apartment in Paris and formed an all-female ambulance unit.

I repeat: With 19 she just took off to go to war in another country.
This is the kind of thing I'm LIVING for.

“I am more like Oscar than Oscar.”

And honestly yea, I get why.
Dolly's life was in a lot of ways a mirror of the way her famous uncle lived and even tho she didn't have to face the social injustice and punishment Oscar endured for his love life, Dolly's last years were filled with tragedy just the same.

She was a lot of things. A socialite and 'salonnière'. A femme de lettre who didn't write but knew to entertain. A woman who spent most of her life loving a woman she would never be the first choice for. An addict who was always chasing a way to tame her consciousness.
A woman who might have influenced the lives of the many famous artists she knew (like Gertrude Stein, Natalie Barney, Radclyffe Hall, Virginia Woolf) without leaving as much of a mark on the world as she deserved.
I mean come on, she flirted with the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald!

"She would always be in the odd position of a women who loved women - but whose name would always be linked with a man."

The structure of this book/biography was pretty confusing at times and I would have liked it more if it would have been more chronological. But the information gathered about different aspects of Dolly's life is extensive, so it makes up for it. I'm also happy that even tho Dolly used her wit in public speaking and never published anything, through her letters I still got to experience some of the way she thought, talked and presented herself.

"I am off to the uncomprehending world, powdered, painted & armed with wit."

[Elysia Fionn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I made the enlightening choice to watch one of the author's YouTube videos, and came away with a better understanding of why I didn't really enjoy this book very much. Ms. Schenkar is extremely self-congratulatory, and thinks being a biographer gives her the cachet of the person she wrote about. She explains this to an audience (both on film, and in her writing) as if no one could possibly understand how deeeeeeply invooooollllllved with her suuuuuuuuubject she had to get in order to write a biography of such brilliance.

Phooey.

First of all, she goes on and on and ON about how "beautiful" Dolly Wilde was (in many varying adjectives of increased superlativitiy)... and yet, to me, the photos suggest she was a nicely dressed horse. As was Natalie Barney, her most famous lover. Hee-haw! To my eye, Oscar Wilde himself was much more beautiful than his niece, no matter what sort of blue her eyes were. So there's that.

I suppose I also like my biographies to be at least minutely attentive to some sort of time line... Schenkar went on about Dolly's death in every single chapter, as if dying from a drug overdose was some mystical, magical event that only a truly wonderful being like Dolly Wilde could attain. Personally, I'd have liked to hear a little more about her life before the denouement. By the time she actually gets around to writing about Dolly's death, I'm bored with it.

Also - the name dropping! Oh, the name-dropping! I kept having to stop reading every few paragraphs to Google another peer of Dolly Wilde, and to try and figure out if this personage was of actual importance in Dolly's life, or if they were just included to impress the reader with how many lesbian artistes the author could name on one page.

Phooey.

Perhaps the reason the author is so enamoured of Dolly Wilde is that they both regarded themselves so highly than it was impossible for anyone else to compete for their adoration?

The greatest stroke against this book is that after self-congratulating to great heights, the author misspells the name of a famous painting ("The Death of Sardanapalus") - spelling it "Sardanapolus" several times over. When something that easy to fact-check is done wrong, it makes me doubt the veracity of the more important facts of the tale.

The author's hubris got in the way of my enjoyment of what could have been a very engaging biography.

The one bright spot was the bit about the palmistry reading of Dolly Wilde's hand print. That was interesting.

As for the rest?

Phooey.

[freya]

dolly’s life is super interesting (and i urge anybody to read up about her) but this book was overly long & bizarrely structured so it wasn’t great technically, but wonderful for an insight into 1920s queer culture

[Harvey · Rating 2 out of 5]

- Dorothy "Dolly" Wilde (Oscar Wilde's niece) was intelligent, witty, and enchanting, dying exactly as she had lived: vividly, rather violently, and at a very good address. She attracted people of wealth, taste, and talent as she burned up her opportunities in flamboyant lesbian affairs and numerous addictions.
- "She seemed to be re-living the life of her infamous uncle.
- interesting biography of an interesting individual, unfortunately poorly written

[Side Real Press · Rating 2 out of 5]

One has to have some sympathy for poor Dolly Wilde. Bearing a name that might well have made her a pariah in some circles, she was also a lesbian and a bon vivant with a ready wit who appeared to be the proverbial life and soul of the party. Add to this a more than passing resemblance to her uncle Oscar and you might well feel that she had a reputation to live up to. A liking for drugs and booze and her volatile relationship with her on/off lover Natalie Barney (who remains, in my view criminally, under-acknowledged for the role her salon played in promoting modernism) their relationship periodically punctured by both women’s multiple infidelities, the phenomenally rich Barney bailing out the often penurious Wilde, a power imbalance that could well have exacerbated Wilde’s feelings of insecurity.

The problem for her, us and this biography is that she didn’t (or couldn’t) capitalize on all this by leaving anything much in the way of a literary ‘legacy’ which means that she is largely the product of the remembrances of others.

The index reads like a who’s who of the period, Djuna Barnes, Sylvia Beach, Romaine Brooks, Jean Cocteau, Colette, Peggy Guggenheim, Radclyffe Hall, Gertrude Stein etc and Dolly partied with them all and was universally liked.

But. Schenkar, faced with what I assume must be something of a paucity of material and seemingly several blank periods in Wilde’s biography tends to repeat herself (sometimes within a few pages) and this becomes somewhat wearying at times. Yes, we know that Wilde’s maid saved her from a probable suicide attempt, you told us earlier- and a little later we are to be told again. Schenker also tends to have flights of her own literary fancy that sit a bit uneasily/pretentiously with me. I would have much preferred to read more of Dolly’s letters. Schenkar tells us that they are wonderful and the extracts she gives seem to indicate the truth of this being extremely literate but there are too few to really be certain. These aspects, together with a rather time-jumpy narrative tend to emphasise Wilde’s shortcomings which is strange as Schenkar is obviously very (perhaps too) enamoured of Wilde.

But if you have any interest in the Barney circle then this is a useful book for the connections it makes between people although ultimately Wilde comes across as a drone, a charming witty drone who acted as social glue between many interesting people a drone none the less, the shadow of her uncle seemingly becoming a burden she could no longer carry. Perhaps she would be better suited to be the subject of a chapter in a larger book rather than a full-length biography. Poor Dolly!

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating biography. Schenkar writes of these women differently than Faderman or other writers - you won’t feel depths of political consciousness here or at the very least any sense of it is subdued and subtle- but rather like a storyteller. The writing is fluid, and through much of it she captivates and lets you feel as if your in on a secret rather than just reading an academic text. She has a wonderful sense of humor (calling Barney the “least monogamous” and Dolly Barney’s “second best and most troublesome lover”). Dolly Wilde wasn’t necessarily always very likable (always a train wreck), but she was interesting and relatable in a tragic way. The only thing that I dislike about it is that it could have been more concise since some areas were painfully repetitive.

[S Foudy · Rating 4 out of 5]

really cool biographical style, and I am always inspired and enamoured by the love with which a biographer comes to care for and remember certain people

maybe I already knew too much, but I thought the book focused too heavily on her latter part of dolly’s life and gave too much credence to natalie, when imo it was way more complicated

my heart aches for dolly and the ways that she seemed so lost. RIP

[Paul French · Rating 4 out of 5]

incredible story of Wilde's niece and the Natalie Barney salon in Paris between the wars

[mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a hard, hard read. The story itself is difficult, as Dolly had as tempestuous a life as you might imagine --and then some! The writing is dense: simultaneously florid and insightful, as much as it is informative. While the story is compelling, it suffers for the telling of it. The author says right up front that the progression is topical rather than chronological, and for several good reasons that become apparent rather quickly. However, the book could easily be several dozen pages shorter with the elimination of the repetitive lists of names, anecdotes, descriptions and quotes that not only appear chapter after chapters, but several times within pages of each other in the same chapter.

Artistic choices and style aside, it is also a compelling read. Another book in this vein I would have given up on half-way through (or less), but apparently Dolly's story is as compelling and inspiring of forgiveness and second chances as she was in life. She lives up (and down) to the title of Truly Wilde, even in the roaring twenties when there was ample competition for the title. Along with her biography is a history lesson on the 20s and 30s Paris that is also worth the effort. The cast of supporting characters is immense, and startlingly well-known but probably not well-known about as you may think. The transition of the Feminist movement from the temperance and suffragette movements to a "modern" Feminism for its own sake occurred in this time, and that is part of Dolly's story, too, along with literature, art, and a little politics of the time, for good measure.

At the end of the book, I felt as exhausted as some of Dolly's friends perhaps did at the end of the 1940s and looking back on her life. Whether this was calculated by the author or just inevitable happenstance I cannot tell, as the author is unapologetically biased when it comes to Dolly, and invites the reader to become so as well.

[Linda Edmonds Cerullo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lengthy and comprehensive look at the life of Oscar Wilde's niece, Dolly Wilde. Dolly was the daughter of his brother Willie, who, like Oscar, had a troubled life. Having died when Dolly was only 4 years old, he had little influence on her life, but did leave a lasting legacy, as did her Uncle Oscar, who died when Dolly was just five. Dolly continued the tradition of her father and uncle. She had an erratic lifestyle and engaged in self-destructive behavior (drug use, alcoholism). She lived much of the time on the goodwill of others, having friends pay her bills. It seems that, although she knew so little personally of her father and uncle, their cloud hung over her throughout her life. She was at the same time enchanted by her uncle and scandalized by him. She became acquainted with the American expatriate Natalie Clifford Barney, who lived in Paris and was an author and poetess and quite wealthy. Natalie was a lesbian with a coterie of like-minded ladies and lovers. Dolly became one of them and so mingled with some of the most famous female voices of the day. At times jealous of Natalie's other lovers yet also dependent on Natalie's largesse, she found herself often torn and overwhelmed by her circumstances. Regrettably, like her father and uncle, she succumbed at age 46 due to an overdose. An intriguing account of a woman every bit as controversial as her uncle and seemingly doomed to follow in both her father's and uncle's footsteps. Remarkable glimpse into a little-known era and a powerful and talented group of females who somehow flew under the radar and are seemingly forgotten. Riveting and thorough account of an unusual woman which stirs both admiration and sorrow in the way she lived her life.

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this book showed great promise initially, one soon grew tired of Dolly's attempts to out-Oscar Oscar. I found her extremely annoying after the first few chapters and was relieved when I entered Natalie Barney's inner circle. To be taken into this mysterious realm by the woman who had been Barney's cook and confidante for forty years is the best part of this book.

This is a big book, so is difficult to transport in one's handbag. However it could have been condensed into a 250 page paperback without losing too much of the gist. I found Schenkar's over-use of foreign phrases contrived, and eventually these italicised insertions begin to grate: do we really need to know that Dolly suffered from "chagrins d'amour" or is "carnet d'addresse" really necessary instead of "address book"?

I didn't like Dolly, and I could understand why Natalie didn't like her either.

[S. Wigget · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd like to travel back in time to 1920s Paris, so I could attend gatherings at Natalie Barney's salon. Dolly Wilde would have charmed everyone with her wit, and I would have written down what she said.

There's a lot of tragedy and sadness in this biography. She had so much potential--I wish Dolly Wilde had written fiction and/or plays like her uncle.

The podcast History is Gay has a wonderful episode about Dolly Wilde--ditto Oscar's. They mention this book.

(I also posted this review on StoryGraph. My account there is se_wigget. I might stop using Goodreads altogether, since it refuses to let me use the app--pretenfing my passwordis wrong. For a while, it wouldn't let me log in at all... then it only let me log in via DuckDuckGo on my phone.)

[Josefine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fact that I read a hardcover for this speaks volumes -- and I really did enjoy the biography of Dolly Wilde (and with it the many glimpses into the Natalie Barney salon and other social circles). What bothered me with the book itself was that many chapters seemed to be written as stand-alones, which often led to a rather circular and occasionally superfluous recounting of certain events or quotes. The transitions could've been smoother and the whole thing made more of a uniform whole rather than the sum of its parts, but I appreciate that it was a stylistic choice.

[Marcos Palacios · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leído en español, de la Editorial Lumen, 2002. 'La importancia de llamarse Dolly Wilde' es un acertado y dramático acercamiento a la figura de la sobrina de Oscar Wilde, que tuvo la mala suerte de llevar una vida de infortunios y decadencia como su tío. Realista y documentada, sin edulcorar su figura, ni ensalzarla ni denigrarla, Joan Schenkar se vale de recursos como testimonios auténticos y personales de personas que convivieron y conocieron a Dolly.

Mi reseña: https://cosmoversus.com/la-teatral-vi...

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pieced together from letters left by Dolly Wilde and the remembrances/writings of those who knew her, this biography is more a series of topical essays than a straightforward biography. Some interesting insights into a truly fascinating woman, who was the niece of Oscar Wilde and lived/died a parallel life to her famous uncle.

[Emg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably 2.5. I wad glad when I finished the book because the tone and the floridness of the writing was getting weary. By the end of the book, I couldn't figure out why Dolly deserved a biography - she was an interesting personality, knew a lot of well-known people but I was left wondering what she did that warranted this attention, what influence she had and what difference did she make.

[Lee · Rating 1 out of 5]

I agree with the reviewers who said that this book was a hard read due to the flowery language, repetition and weird structure. Life is too short to slog through a chosen book.

Ms. Shenkar, you are a sesquipedalian. Big turn off.

[Nel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly an incredible book! It has certainly strengthened my interest in the group surrounding Natalie Clifford Barney once again. Dolly was an immensely interesting person and reading about her mysterious, badly documented life made her seem almost real.

[baubleblob · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dolly Wilde really does seem like a truly unique person who had an exciting life worth reading about. But unfortunately the author's style is so infuriating, unnecessarily detailed and repetitive that the book feels like it's older than Dolly herself. I give up with this one.

[Mae · Rating 4 out of 5]

of course I am horribly into all of the wildes and their associates so this went down a treat HOWEVER I take a star away for the author’s desperation to convince me that cyril wilde was actually called cecil. this is a load of bollocks

[Nrthrn.Grl · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting subject but I found the writer's style difficult to read. I kept coming back to it and was glad I did.

[Sarah Fonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schenkar gets a bit repetitive at times, which works well if you're a reader who, like me takes awhile to absorb key details. Otherwise, this biography definitely could've been 200 pages shorter.

[Titta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dolly herself is a marvelously interesting person but the book is unfocused and too speculative.

[Ashley Lomasney · Rating 4 out of 5]

doing a class project on her, book is good but a drag at some points 🧘‍♀️

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, Dolly Wilde; niece of Oscar, mainstay of the “lesbian salon scene” of interwar Paris, longtime lover of Natalie Barney… interesting woman!
But this biography! The author spends her first chapter explaining what exists in the historical record, 200 love letters to and from Natalie Barney, a few receipts, interviews with acquaintances, a postmortem and not much else, and then explains how she’d like to structure the biography. She wants it to be lively but does not want it to be a “novel in hiding.” Which, fine. A lot of biographies are written without a lot of primary records from the subject, and a lot of biographies are written in different forms.

BUT THIS BIOGRAPHY! Instead of letting the story flow, the author stops every couple of paragraphs and says, “Okay, now I’m going to write what I imagine that meeting/argument/year was like.” Yes, yes, WE KNOW. That’s what all biographies do!

Not to mention the fact that the author repeats things over and over. Dolly didn’t like to talk about her childhood, Dolly didn’t like to talk about her childhood, Dolly didn’t like to talk about her childhood… AND THEN, to make up for this missing period, the author makes some obviously unsubstantiated claims, like, Dolly didn’t like to talk about her childhood, so maybe she was sexually abused as a child! Excuse me? How can you just throw that out there?

I don’t know, maybe it’s because the author is a playwright and this was her first biography. Maybe it’s because I recently read an excellent biography of Natalie Barney Wild Heart A Life - Natalie Clifford Barney s Journey from Victorian America to the Literary Salons of Paris by Suzanne Rodriguez, but this book is really disappointing me. I’m eager to learn more about Dolly, so I’ll finish it and keep it for reference, but this, this is definitely not one of the better books I’ve read this year.

[Nicole C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like most people, you have probably never heard of Dolly Wilde, born three months after Oscar's demise. Although she never met her uncle, she seems to have been much like him. Seems like she was an interesting figure to know, involved in Natalie Clifford Barney's historical salon, among other things. She was also a money-grubber and a drug addict, and died rather violently. What really happened to her? An intriguing read, nonetheless. If you like biographies about unusual people, you won't be disappointed.