Oscar Wilde

by John Sloan

Wit, dandy, literary anarchist, self-publicist, and homosexual martyr, Oscar Wilde achieved fame and notoriety at a time when mass culture and communication promoted the 'new' in every area of British life. This edition, part of Oxford's new Authors in Context series, examines the rich
interplay between Wilde's society and his writings and shows the remarkable recontextualizing of Wilde and his work in film, stage, and the media in the century following his death.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

240 pages, Paperback

First published June 26, 2003

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Kyra Boisseree · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finally finished this! Now I feel ready to move on to the Ellmann, whenever I get around to buying it. This was pretty introductory, but it still managed to tell me things I hadn't learned in my Age of Oscar Wilde class, such as the fact that Oscar Wilde really did convert to Catholicism (something I saw controversy about online, but was never discussed in class). Actually, when it talked about that, it mentioned where his funeral mass was held in Paris: Saint-Germaine-des-Pres. At the time, I was sitting on a bench in Luxembourg Gardens, so I pulled out my mapbook of Paris and realized that Saint-Germaine-des-Pres was right down the street. So....we just....walked over. It was rather surreal. The church is currently undergoing renovations, but it's still open to the public, and from what I could see, it's going to look amazing when the renovations are done. I don't know if it will look more of less like what it looked like in 1900, but I'll still go back and see it one day. It was definitely my favorite church we visited (and we visited many churchs, including Notre Dame, Sacre-Coeur, and Sainte-Chapelle). I also visited Oscar and Robbie's grave twice (and brought them flowers twice, and kissed it twice), which was my only motivation for tagging along with my twin while they did research. I was sort of surprised that I could find no indication that Robbie's ashes are interred with Oscar, even though I know they're there. But that's not really something to discuss in this review.

The only chapter I really had issues with was "Wilde and Intellecutal Issues," specifically the part on Ethics and Religion, just because I thought it overlooked The Soul of Man Under Socialism and De Profundis, and sort of treated Oscar's works as....more fragmentary? Or differentiated? Than I would necessarily agree with them being. There was also a bit of conflation of Lord Henry Wotton and Oscar Wilde that I thought was just rather lazy, and perhaps misleading to people who might not be otherwise familiar with the topics under discussion. I also don't think De Profundis was handled properly, but this is mostly just because my own interpretation of De Profundis tends to divert from the opinion of the majority, and would perhaps be out of place to discuss on this kind of general-overview-type book.

My favorite parts were the dicsussions of Irishness and Oscar's place in nationalist literary movements, in the 19th century as well as after his death in the 20th. It made me really excited for the Irish Literature class I'm taking in the spring (which I decided to take solely because Oscar Wilde was listed as one of the writers we are going to read).

[Dylan Rock · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good study of Oscar Wilde life and work.

[David Willey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid intro to Wilde - would love to see an updated edition that spent more time on his religion plus more on his identity as Irish/Anglo-Irish

[Katrina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oscar Wilde? Interesting. This book? Not so much. Bargain bin bios are a crapshoot.

[Haythem Bastawy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent resource which superbly discusses Wilde's works within their social, literary and historical events, covering a wide range of themes and subjects.

[Kadri · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5