The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde

The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde

Author: Peter Ackroyd

Publisher:

Published: 1983

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A work of historical fiction using the known facts of Oscar Wilde's life, interpretated by Peter Ackroyd in a unique, but, convincing way.


My Words Echo Thus

My Words Echo Thus

Author: Barry Lewis

Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9781570036682

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A reading of Ackroyd that maps the influence of his historical and fiction writings on one another


The Importance of Reinventing Oscar

The Importance of Reinventing Oscar

Author: Uwe Böker

Publisher: Rodopi

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9789042014008

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The present collection of essays is the outcome of the Oscar Wilde conference held at the Technical University of Dresden, 31 August - 3 September 2000. The papers cover a wide range of historical and comparative aspects: they look into the status of Wilde as poet, dramatist, essayist and intellectual during his own times as well as investigate the meaning of his work for subsequent writers and critics, thus, giving an outline of the Wildean history of literary reception, intellectual discourse and media transformation. Intellectually brilliant and challenging, Oscar Wilde had been a favourite of the late Victorians, performing the roles of the dandy and the poet of art for art's sake. However, due to his questioning of prevalent moral double standards and his insistence on the autonomy of art, he was indicted for gross indecencies, convicted, and sent to prison. Instead of being ostracised, he became a source of inspiration for writers and artists on the British isles as well as on the European continent. The papers in this volume explore such topics as Wilde's concepts of socialism and aestheticism, his fashioning of the femme fatale and of the dandy, his use of fashion and of simulation, his impact on modernism and postmodernism as well as on genres such as crime writing and fictional biography, and the influence of Wilde on writers such as James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Joe Orton, Peter Ackroyd, Tom Stoppard, David Hare and Mark Ravenhill. Other papers focus on the reception of Wilde in Russia, former Yugoslavia, Hungary and Germany as well as on cinematic and Internet representations of Wilde. Critical and creative responses vary from the general to the specific - from traditional assessments to analyses of the arts of camp, parody, and pastiche; thus, indicative of the (sub)cultural appropriation of 'Saint Oscar' (Terry Eagleton).


The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde

The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde

Author: Joseph Pearce

Publisher: Ignatius Press

Published: 2009-09-03

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 1681495643

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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 image is not how Wilde saw himself. Joseph Pearce's biography strips away pretensions to show the real man, his aspirations and desires. It uncovers how he was broken by his prison sentence; it probes the deeper thinking behind masterpieces such as The Picture of Dorian Gray and De Profundis; and it traces his fascination with Catholicism through to his eleventh-hour conversion. Pearce removes the masks and reveals the Wilde beneath the surface. He has written a profound, wide-ranging study with many original insights on a great literary figure.


Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Author: Matthew Sturgis

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2021-10-12

Total Pages: 865

ISBN-13: 0525656367

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The fullest, most textural, most accurate—most human—account of Oscar Wilde's unique and dazzling life—based on extensive new research and newly discovered materials, from Wilde's personal letters and transcripts of his first trial to newly uncovered papers of his early romantic (and dangerous) escapades and the two-year prison term that shattered his soul and his life. "Simply the best modern biography of Wilde." —Evening Standard Drawing on material that has come to light in the past thirty years, including newly discovered letters, documents, first draft notebooks, and the full transcript of the libel trial, Matthew Sturgis meticulously portrays the key events and influences that shaped Oscar Wilde's life, returning the man "to his times, and to the facts," giving us Wilde's own experience as he experienced it. Here, fully and richly portrayed, is Wilde's Irish childhood; a dreamy, aloof boy; a stellar classicist at boarding school; a born entertainer with a talent for comedy and a need for an audience; his years at Oxford, a brilliant undergraduate punctuated by his reckless disregard for authority . . . his arrival in London, in 1878, "already noticeable everywhere" . . . his ten-year marriage to Constance Lloyd, the father of two boys; Constance unwittingly welcoming young men into the household who became Oscar's lovers, and dying in exile at the age of thirty-nine . . . Wilde's development as a playwright. . . becoming the high priest of the aesthetic movement; his successes . . . his celebrity. . . and in later years, his irresistible pull toward another—double—life, in flagrant defiance and disregard of England's strict sodomy laws ("the blackmailer's charter"); the tragic story of his fall that sent him to prison for two years at hard labor, destroying his life and shattering his soul.


Irish Peacock & Scarlet Marquess

Irish Peacock & Scarlet Marquess

Author: Merlin Holland

Publisher: Fourth Estate (GB)

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

One of the most famous love affairs in literary history is that of Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Bosie Douglas. As a direct consequence of this relationship, Wilde underwent three trials in 1895. In this text, Merlin Holland presents the original transcript of the Wilde versus Queensberry trial.


History is Mostly Repair and Revenge

History is Mostly Repair and Revenge

Author: Liliana Sikorska

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 9783631597712

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Papers presented at a symposium organized by the Dept. of English Literature and Literary Linguistics, School of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznaaan.


Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Author: Melissa Knox

Publisher:

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 9780300059052

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Drawing on new information as well as on recent biographies and studies, Knox sketches the important characters in Wilde's formative years; an adoring and demanding mother, a father whose scandalous life degraded the family, and a beloved sister who died when Oscar was eleven. She describes Wilde's first daring efforts as a young man to challenge British mores; his lifelong battle with his fears of the syphilis he reportedly contracted at Oxford; his marriage and two children; his tempestuous and flamboyant love affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, whose father, the marquess of Queensberry, accused Wilde of homosexual practices; Wilde's libel suit against the marquess, subsequent trial, and two-year imprisonment; and his last years in exile, disgrace, and ill health.


Mr Cadmus

Mr Cadmus

Author: Peter Ackroyd

Publisher: Canongate Books

Published: 2020-10-01

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1786898950

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Two apparently harmless women reside in cottages one building apart in the idyllic English village of Little Camborne. Miss Finch and Miss Swallow, cousins, have put their pasts behind them and settled into conventional country life. But when a mysterious foreigner, Theodore Cadmus – from a Mediterranean island nobody has heard of – moves into the middle cottage, the safe monotony of their lives is shattered. Soon, long-hidden secrets and long-held grudges threaten to surface, drawing all into a vortex of subterfuge, theft, violence, mayhem . . . and murder.