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.
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Richard Ellmann capped an illustrious career in biography (his James Joyce is considered one of the masterpieces of the 20th century) with this life of Oscar Wilde, which won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and Pulitzer Prize on its original publication in 1988. Ellmann's account of Wilde's extravagantly operatic life as poet, playwright, aesthete, and martyr to sexual morality is notable not only for the full portrait it gives of Wilde, but also for Ellmann's assessment of his subject's literary greatness; both aims are served by a plethora of quotations from Wilde's own work and correspondence. Wilde straddled the line between the Victorian age and the modern world as he did everything in life ... with impeccable style.
From Library Journal
The late Ellmann worked 20 years on this magisterial biography. He tells the fascinating story of Oscar Wildewit and aesthete, poet and playwright, scapegrace and scapegoatmore fully and irresistibly than it has ever been told before. Ellmann captures Wilde's charm and high spirits and also the darker side of his personality, which led to increasingly public homosexual affairs at a time when homosexuality was legally a crime. Ellmann skillfully marshals his material (some of it new), and he writes brilliantly but unobtrusively. A masterpiece to match Ellmann's James Joyce (1959), this work is certain to trigger renewed interest in Wilde. Keith Cushman, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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52 of 53 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
With this volume, Richard Ellmann elevates Oscar Wilde into the select circle of Ireland's other literary giants of whom he wrote so eloquently: William Butler Yeats and James Joyce. (It was left to Michael Holroyd to give George Bernard Shaw his due.) While this volume is a sophisticated, wide-ranging, scholarly biography, it also brims with Wilde's wit and bold life, which, as Oscar himself pointed out, was where his genius lay. The slow, steady accumulation of detail, allusion and anecdote pays off as Wilde reaches his pinnacle--the original production of "The Importance of Being Earnest"--only to plunge into the abyss of imprisonment. As Wilde tempts fate with rough trade dalliances and his ill-conceived challenge to the Marquess of Queensbury, you find yourself almost shouting out for him to stop and save himself. But he doesn't, because Ellmann makes us understand that Wilde's nature led him to that point. The end is sad, but his wit never deserts him, right up until his death throes when he notes that either the wallpaper in the room must go or he must--which he does shortly thereafter. Today, qualities that Wilde pioneered are a part of modern life: camp humor, scathing put-downs, an emphasis on style, an obsession with appearances. In Wilde's day, he was an almost solitary figure in that regard, leading the way into the modern world. The witticisms of "The Importance of Being Earnest" are as humorous and apt today as the day they were first spoken in London in 1895. Richard Ellmann helps us understand why.
30 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If Richard Ellmann had not already written the definitive literary biography (his astonishing JAMES JOYCE), this utterly first-rate biography would be a legitimate candidate for the title. One might initially think that Wilde would be an easy subject for a biography: his life was interesting, eventful, literarily significant, triumphant, and tragic. But the problem is that for many Wilde has become a symbol either of the late 19th century Victorian decadence or the oppressed homosexual. To treat anyone, and especially Wilde, primarily as a symbol or a representative of anything outside himself, is to distort and misrepresent. The genius of Ellmann's biography of Wilde is that Wilde never becomes either more or less than the writer and person Oscar Wilde.
The portrait that emerges of Wilde is absolutely fascinating. If Ellmann's JAMES JOYCE is the greater biography, Wilde emerges nonetheless as the more interesting of the two Irish authors, and perhaps the more brilliant, if not the more productive. Indeed, one of the things that emerges from Ellmann's book is a sense that Wilde might have become a greater writer than he did, and not just if he had not sued the Marquess of Queensbury and had not been sent to prison on sodomy charges. Wilde emerges as even more brilliant than the work he produced, as if he had produced much of his work with a minimum of reference.
Ellmann does a marvelous job of situation Wilde in his time and place, with the cultural and artistic concerns paramount at the time. He also does a fair and just job of depicting the major involvements in his life, beginning with Whistler and his wife Constance and continuing on with his various involvements, especially with Alfred Lord Douglas. With the latter, Ellmann certainly does not try to idealize the relationship, but recounts it warts and all. If there is a villain in the book, it is not, surprisingly, the Marquess of Queensbury, but his son Lord Douglas.
The saddest part of the book, by far, is the section recounting Wilde's life after leaving prison, which is one disappointment after another. He first intended to reunite and reconcile with his wife, but she unexpectedly died, thereby cutting himself off from both a family and his children. He then reunites uncomfortably with Lord Douglas, but the attempt is a disaster. He final year or two are recounted as being especially miserable, with an impoverished Wilde reduced to conversing entertainingly with strangers for the benefit of a drink. It is especially heartbreaking to read how almost all his former friends cut him off, refusing to help him in his time of greatest need. An encounter with a young man from Arkansas provides perhaps the most apt Wilde quote from his last days. Upon hearing about Arkansas, Wilde remarked, "I would like to flee like a wounded hart into Arkansas."
One learns a vast amount of fascinating biographical detail about Wilde's life from this book. For instance: Wilde was double-jointed, could speed read and knock off books in scarcely more than a half hour in some instances. He was acquainted with the Yeats family in Ireland, and spoke with a pronounced Irish accent until he went to Oxford. He bought Thomas Carlyle's writing desk. He was a Mason. Physically he had tiny feet and teeth that were darkened by mercury treatments. And there is much, much more.
On nearly every level, this is a truly great biography. Even if one is not a fan of Wilde's works, it is definitely worth reading.
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I bought this book after seeing the movie, "Wilde" which is based on it. I have to say that I caught a bit of "Oscar Fever" while reading it. The book is incredibly thorough and well-researched; Ellman definitely knows his stuff. The book is written in an admiring, respectful tone but remains objective. Excerpts from Wilde's works that the author found particularly significant are included, as well as many wonderful pictures.
After reading this book I have a lot of admiration and fondness for Wilde, and I marvel at his fascinating but ultimately tragic life. A couple of months before I read this book I was wandering around the cemetery de Pere-Lachaise in Paris and happened upon Wilde's grave. I didn't think too much of it then but now that I have learned a bit about the man I really do want to go back and pay my respects. Ellman has written a beautiful, loving portrait of Wilde and it is thoroughly enjoyable and poignant. I'd also recommend the wonderful film starring Stephen Fry and Jude Law but to get the whole story, read the book!!!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
excellent study of this fascinating writer
"Sometimes I think that the artistic life is a long and lovely suicide, and am not sorry that it is so.... Read more
Published 9 months ago by whj
The best bio of dear Oscar
The best biography I've read about Oscar Wilde . I read it about 8/9 years ago but I check details I want to remember regularly in it . Read more
Published 9 months ago by Rachel
A witty, controversial, tragic life
Oscar Wilde was one of a kind. No noted person in modern Western history quite had his mixture of the brilliant, the witty, the perceptive, the unconventional -- and the... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Wayne Engle
On rereading it after twenty years . . .
I first read Ellmann's "Oscar Wilde" shortly after it was published more than twenty years ago. Reading it again has proved even more a pleasure. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Patricia Romanowski Bashe
A Man Ahead of His Time
Ellmann's portrait of Wilde--the Irish scholar, poet, playwright, wit, aesthete, and "posing sodomite"--is a masterpiece. Read more
Published 24 months ago by Barbara Badham
The mind of a thoroughly well-informed man...is dreadful. OW
Here's some background; Richard Ellmann's "Oscar Wilde," was my personal selection for reading in the now infamous DFW Literary Society's book club. Read more
Published on March 31, 2010 by M. Swinney
Very complete and well written biography
I am a biography buff and am really enjoying this book. I have to read it with a dictionary but I like that. It is a very complete and heady biography. Read more
Published on August 6, 2009 by Dana Oldfather
Gets better with each reading
Ellmann's biography of Wilde is just about everything you can hope for: very richly detailed, extremely well written, and practically radiating with a love of the writer and his... Read more
Published on March 29, 2009 by Martin Weil
Extensive
I couldn't believe the depths Ellmann takes the reader in his biography of Oscar Wilde. Everything; every aspect of Wilde's life is thoroughly explored. Read more
Published on June 7, 2008 by Zelie Nic
Outstanding!
Imagine the challenges facing a Wilde biographer: the contradictions of an outrageous, larger-than-life subject whose brittle public persona masked his inner torments; Wilde's... Read more
Published on April 15, 2008 by David M. Giltinan
Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
Oscar Wilde first emerges for us into articulate being in 1868, when he was thirteen, in a letter he wrote to his mother from school. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
green carnation, apple leaf Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Dorian Gray, New York, Lady Wilde, Sir William, Alfred Douglas, Hunter Blair, Robert Ross, Frank Harris, Lillie Langtry, Lord Henry, Opera House, Henry James, Lady Windermere's Fan, Sarah Bernhardt, William Wilde, Frank Miles, Lady Queensberry, More Adey, Max Beerbohm, United States, Ada Leverson, Constance Wilde, George Lewis, Mary Anderson, Tite Street New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Oscar Wilde first emerges for us into articulate being in 1868, when he was thirteen, in a letter he wrote to his mother from school. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
green carnation, apple leaf Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Dorian Gray, New York, Lady Wilde, Sir William, Alfred Douglas, Hunter Blair, Robert Ross, Frank Harris, Lillie Langtry, Lord Henry, Opera House, Henry James, Lady Windermere's Fan, Sarah Bernhardt, William Wilde, Frank Miles, Lady Queensberry, More Adey, Max Beerbohm, United States, Ada Leverson, Constance Wilde, George Lewis, Mary Anderson, Tite Street New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 76
books:
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100
books
cite this book:
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- The Importance of Being Earnest: And Other Plays (Modern Library Classics) by Oscar Wilde on 10 pages
- The Picture of Dorian Gray (Modern Library) by Oscar Wilde on 8 pages
- Lady Windermere's Fan (Dover Thrift Editions) by Oscar Wilde on 7 pages
- The Importance of Being Earnest with Connections by Oscar Wilde on 6 pages
- A Woman of No Importance (Collected Works of Oscar Wilde) by Oscar Wilde on 6 pages
See all 76 books this book cites
- Perennial Decay: On the Aesthetics and Politics of Decadance (New Cultural Studies) by Liz Constable on 11 pages
- Insult and the Making of the Gay Self (Series Q) by Didier Eribon on 10 pages
- In the Nineties by John Stokes on 6 pages
- Rising Star by Rhonda K. Garelick on 5 pages
- Bram Stoker And The Man Who Was Dracula by Barbara Belford on 5 pages
See all 100 books citing this book
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