Books on Life of Famous playwright and novelist Oscar Wilde

Books on Famous Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet Oscar Wilde

Books in list (21)


Title: Oscar Wildes Last Stand

Threat of exposure was costing England the war. Allan sued Billing for libel, and the ensuing trial, brought to life in this authoritative, spellbinding book, held the world in thrall. Was there or was there not a black book?
Author(s): Philip Hoare
ISBN 13: 9781628726954
Pages: 256

Title: Oscar Wilde & Paris

Véronique Daviau has researched for many years Oscar Wilde's influence on Parisian artists as well as their own influence on the aesthete for this fascinating book on Oscar Wilde's various stays n Paris. From Oscar Wilde's first trip to Paris with a play for Sarah Bernhardt, his honeymoon in the French capital, his most creative stays there in the 1890's till his death, all his sojourns are set within the social, political and literary Parisian background. Follow him during this meetings with Sarah Bernhardt, Retté, Victor Hugo, Moréas, André Gide, Verlaine, Mallarme, Zola, Maeterlinck and many others in the most famous restaurants and cafés of the time. Witness the genesis of his "Salomé" among the Symbolists at the time when Paris is being terrorised by Anarchists and shaken by the "Affaire Dreyfus". Following his release from jail, wander in his company through the Anarchists' Paris, Montmartre, les Folies-Bergères, le Moulin Rouge and finally le Père Lachaise cemetery.
Author(s): Ms véronique daviau
ISBN 13: 9781502596994
Pages: 188

Title: Oscar Wilde

The biography sensitive to the tragic pattern of the story of a great subject: Oscar Wilde - psychologically and sexually complicated, enormously quotable, central to a alluring cultural world and someone whose life assumed an unbearably dramatic shape.

Hailed as a masterpiece, Ellmann's biography of Oscar Wilde has been acclaimed as a perfect marriage of biographer and subject. With precision and wit and sensitive to the tragic pattern of the story, it brings Wilde to life as never before. 32 pages of photos.

Author(s): Richard Ellmann
ISBN 13: 9780394759845
Pages: 736

Title: Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius

In this elegant and affectionate biography of one of the most controversial personalities of the nineteenth century, Barbara Belford breaks new ground in the evocation of Oscar Wilde's personal life and in our understanding of the choices he made for his art. Published for the centenary of Wilde's death, here is a fresh, full-scale examination of the author of The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray, a figure not only full of himself but enjoying life to the fullest.

Based on extensive study of original sources and animated throughout by historical detail, anecdote, and insight, the narrative traces Wilde's progression from his childhood in an intellectual Irish household to his maturity as a London author to the years of his European exile. Here is Wilde the Oxford Aesthete becoming the talk of London, going off to tour America, lecturing on the craftsmanship of Cellini to the silver miners of Colorado, condemning the ugliness of cast-iron stoves to the ladies of Boston. Here is the domestic Wilde, building sandcastles with his sons, and the generous Wilde, underwriting the publication of poets, lending and spending with no thought of tomorrow. And here is the romantic Wilde, enthralled with Lord Alfred Douglas in an affair that thrived on laughter, smitten with Florence Balcombe, flirting with Violet Hunt, obsessed with Lillie Langtry, loving Constance, his wife.

Vividly evoked are the theatres, clubs, restaurants, and haunts that Wilde made famous. More than previous accounts, Belford's biography evaluates Wilde's homosexuality as not just a private matter but one connected to the politics and culture of the 1890s. Wilde's timeless observations, which make him the most quoted playwright after Shakespeare, are seamlessly woven into the life, revealing a man of remarkable intellect, energy, and warmth.

Too often portrayed as a tragic figure—persecuted, imprisoned, sent into exile, and shunned—Wilde emerges from this intuitive portrait as fully human and fallible, a man who, realizing that his creative years were behind him, committed himself to a life of sexual freedom, which he insisted was the privilege of every artist.

Even now, we have yet to catch up with the man who exhibited some of the more distinguishing characteristics of the twentieth century's preoccupation with fame and zeal for self-advertisement. Wilde's personality shaped an era, and his popularity as a wit and a dramatist has never ebbed.

Author(s): Barbara Belford
ISBN 13: 9780812992618
Pages: 400

Title: The Fall of the House of Wilde

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Author(s): Emer OSullivan
ISBN 13: 9781408880128
Pages: 512

Title: The Life of Oscar Wilde

Author(s): Hesketh Pearson
ISBN 13: 9781859585344

Title: Oscar Wilde and Myself (Classic Reprint)

About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work.
Author(s): Alfred Bruce Douglas
ISBN 13: 9781330967041
Pages: 350

Title: Oscar Wilde: A Biography

Gide, in this first English translation, defended a poet named Oscar Wilde when other poets threatened to wreck Wilde’s life and attempted to show that Wilde was an honorable man. Gide’s personal sketches are presented in this book that are in original form. This work was written during the prime of Oscar Wilde’s life. André Gide (1869-1951), French writer, whose novels, plays, and autobiographical works are distinguished for their exhaustive analysis of individual efforts at self-realization and Protestant ethical concepts; together with his critical works they had a profound influence on French writing and philosophy. Gide was born November 22, 1869, in Paris into a strict Protestant family and educated at the École Alsacienne and the Lycée Henri IV. In his first book, Les cahiers d’Andre Walter (The Notebooks of Andre Walter, 1891), Gide described the religious and romantic idealism of an unhappy young man. He then became associated with the Symbolists, but in 1894 began to develop an individualistic approach and style. In Les nourritures terrestres (The Fruits of the Earth, 1897) he preached the doctrine of active hedonism. Thereafter his works were devoted to examining the problems of individual freedom and responsibility, from many points of view. The Immoralist (1902; trans. 1930) and Strait Is the Gate (1909; trans. 1924) are studies of individual ethical concepts in conflict with conventional morality. The Caves of the Vatican (trans. 1927 and also published in English as Lafcadio’s Adventures), in which Gide ridiculed the possibility of complete personal independence, appeared in 1914. The idyll La symphonie pastorale (The Pastoral Symphony, 1919; produced as a motion picture, 1947) dealt with love and responsibility. Gide examined the problems of middle-class families and of adolescence in If It Die (1920; trans. 1935) and in the popular novel of youth in Paris, The Counterfeiters (1926; trans. 1928). Gide’s preoccupation with individual moral responsibility led him to seek public office. After filling municipal positions in Normandy (Normandie), he became a special envoy of the colonial ministry in 1925-26 and wrote two books describing conditions in the French African colonies. These reports, Voyage au Congo (1927) and Retour du Tchad (1927), were instrumental in bringing about reforms in French colonial law. They were published together in English as Travels in the Congo (1929). In the early 1930s Gide had expressed his admiration and hope for the “experiment” in the USSR, but after a journey in the Soviet Union he reported his disillusionment in Return from the U.S.S.R. (1936; trans. 1937). Many of Gide’s critical studies appeared in La Nouvelle Revue Française, a literary periodical that he helped to found in 1909 and that became a dominant influence in French intellectual circles. These essays are principally analyses of the psychology of creative artists.

A celebrated and feared English ghost is outraged when the new American owners of his haunting place refuse to take him seriously and actually fight back against him.

Author(s): Andre Gide
ISBN 13: 9780806529707
Pages: 64

Title: Son of Oscar Wilde

As the public interest in Oscar Wilde grew, and the lies about him multiplied, Vyvyan Holland, Wilde's son, decided to write his own account of the "Oscar Wilde scandal" and its aftermath. The first publication of Son of Oscar Wilde in 1954 was a daring endeavor, considering that homosexuality remained a crime in England at that time, and his father had been convicted of that crime.
Now available with a new Foreword by Merlin Holland, Vyvyan Holland's son, this memoir—which Vyvyan Holland described as "not a very amusing or entertaining story"—reveals Oscar Wilde as a much-loved though often absent member of the family. Focusing on the scandal from the point of view of a small boy, it dramatically portrays how the family dealt with Oscar's persecution, and after his death, attempted to deny that he ever lived by taking the extreme measure of changing the sons' names from Wilde to Holland. Vyvyan Holland describes in detail his early happy years followed by the exile and his years in Germany and Monaco, his return to England and his adolescent years, and his decision as a mature adult to lay to rest the bitter memory of his early years by recording them for posterity.
This edition also contains 33 of Oscar Wilde's letters to friends; a reminiscence of Wilde by W.W. Ward; some prose poems by Wilde; letters from Lord Alfred Douglas to Vyvyan Holland; and several contemporary newspaper reports of events during and after the Oscar Wilde affair. A tragic story of prejudice, fear, and much sadness, this memoir reveals one boy's ability to survive such extreme cruelty and suffering.

This volume contains more than eighty stories ranging from the classics by Poe, Dickens, Henry James and other gems to new works written specifically for this book.

Author(s): Vyvyan Holland, Merlin Holland
ISBN 13: 9780786707010
Pages: 240

Title: Oscar Wilde in America

Author(s): Oscar Wilde
ISBN 13: 9780252079726

Title: The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde

Vilified by fellow Victorians for his sexuality and his dandyism, Oscar Wilde, the great poet, satirist and playwright, is hailed today, in some circles, as a "progressive" sexual liberator. But this is not how Wilde saw himself. His actions and pretensions did not bring him happiness and fulfillment. This study of Wilde's brilliant and tragic life goes beyond the mistakes that brought him notoriety in order to explore this emotional and spiritual search. Unlike any other biography of Wilde, it strips away these pretensions to show the real man, his aspirations and desires. It uncovers how he was broken by his two-year prison sentence; it probes the deeper thinking behind masterpieces such as The Picture of Dorian Gray, Salome, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” and “De Profundis”; and it traces his fascination with Catholicism through to his eleventh-hour conversion. Published on the 150th anniversary of his birth, this biography removes the masks which have confused previous biographers and reveals the real Wilde beneath the surface. Once again, Joseph Pearce has written a profound, wide-ranging study with many original insights on a great literary figure. "A brilliant interpretive biography of a wit, bon vivant and literary genius who still delights us a century after his death. I have read many of the other books on Wilde, and this is my favorite." — Ron Hansen, New York Times Best-selling Author of Mariette in Ecstasy "Chesterton, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and now Oscar Wilde have all been coaxed out of their graves for us by this grave-robber named Pearce. Oscar proves to be a very lively ghost." — Peter Kreeft, PhD, Professor of Philosophy, Boston College
Author(s): Joseph Pearce
ISBN 13: 9781621640592
Pages: 400

Title: The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde had one of literary history's mostexplosive love affairs with Lord Alfred "Bosie"Douglas. In 1895, Bosie's father, the Marquessof Queensberry, delivered a note to the Albemarle Clubaddressed to "Oscar Wilde posing as sodomite." WithBosie's encouragement, Wilde sued the Marquess forlibel. He not only lost but he was tried twice for "grossindecency" and sent to prison with two years' hard labor.With this publication of the uncensored trial transcripts,readers can for the first time in more than a century hearWilde at his most articulate and brilliant. The Real Trialof Oscar Wilde documents an alarmingly swift fall fromgrace; it is also a supremely moving testament to the rightto live, work, and love as one's heart dictates.

Author(s): Merlin Holland, Hodell
ISBN 13: 9780007158058
Pages: 384

Title: Oscar Wilde; His Life and Confessions Volume 1

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XII These two years 1893-4 saw Oscar Wilde at the very zenith of success. Thackeray, who always felt himself a monetary failure in comparison with Dickens, calls success "one of the greatest of a great man's qualities," and Oscar was not successful merely, he was triumphant. Not Sheridan the day after vhis marriage, not Byron when he awoke to find himself famous, ever reached such a pinnacle. His plays were bringing in so much that he could spend money like water; he had won every sort of popularity; the gross applause of the many, and the finer incense of the few who constitute the jury of Fame; his personal popularity too was extraordinary; thousands admired him, many liked him; he seemed to have everything that heart could desire and perfect health to boot. Even his home life was without a cloud. Two stories which he told at this time paint him. One was about his two boys, Vyvyan and Cyril. • "Children are sometimes interesting," he began. "The other night I was reading when my wife came and asked me to go upstairs and reprove the elder boy: Cyril, it appeared, would not say his prayers. He had quarrelled with Vyvyan, and beaten him, and when he was shaken and told he must say his prayers, he would not kneel down, or ask God to make him a good boy. Of course I had to go upstairs and see to it. I took the chubby little fellow on my knee, and told him in a grave way that he had been very naughty; naughty to hit his younger brother, and naughty because he had given his mother pain. He must kneel down at once, and ask God to forgive him and make him a good boy. "'I was not naughty,' he pouted, 'it was Vyvyan; he was naughty.' "I explained to him that his temper was naughty, and that he must do as he was told. With a little...
Author(s): Frank Harris
ISBN 13: 9781230358697
Pages: 68

Title: Oscar Wilde; His Life and Confessions

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: .
Author(s): Frank Harris
ISBN 13: 9781230370897
Pages: 74

Title: Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions

A biography of the great man, written by the Irish-American author, editor, journalist and publisher who was friendly with many well-known figures of his day.
Author(s): Frank Harris
ISBN 13: 9781406532692
Pages: 456

Title: Oscar Wilde and His Circle (National Portrait Gallery)

Author(s): Simon Callow
ISBN 13: 9781855144781

Title: Constance

Author(s): Franny Moyle
ISBN 13: 9781605985206

Title: Oscar Wilde

Reissued to coincide with the recent revival of interest in Oscar Wilde, this stimulating reappraisal of Wilde, his work, his life and his times, by the award-winning biographer and theatre critic, Sheridan Morley, seeks to unravel the enigma that has fascinated so many for so long.
Author(s): Sheridan Morley, Oscar Wilde
ISBN 13: 9781557833303
Pages: 160

Title: Oscar Wilde; his Life and Confessions

Author(s): Bernard Shaw, Frank Harris
ISBN 13: 9781117140407

 


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