The Wilde Album [Hardcover]

Merlin Holland (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 1998

The most comprehensive collection of photographs and images of Wilde--compiled by his only grandson.

Oscar Wilde was one of the first and unquestionably one of the greatest self-publicists who ever lived. With that exceptional streak of modernity that characterized much of his life and work, he understood the power of the image in his campaign to promote the self. As early as his Oxford days, he had himself photographed with his contemporaries in loud checked suits of the latest fashion. The Wilde Album now publishes more of these images of Oscar than have ever been seen together before, as well as later photographs, some previously unpublished, from the family archive, including rare snapshots of Oscar in his last years in Italy; the famous sitting in New York for Napoleon Sarony in fur coat and velvet suit; and the good, the bad, and the vicious caricatures, cartoons, and lithographs.

In the accompanying text, Merlin Holland examines Wilde's life as reflected in the photographs and images, paying particular attention to his relationships with friends, family, and lovers, as well as the profound influence of his Irish upbringing. He also investigates the reasons for the adverse opinions his work engered and the background to the famous legal battles that finally led to imprisonment and exile.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Oscar Wilde was a man ahead of his time. He was famous for pushing the parameters of socially accepted sexual codes (albeit with disastrous results), and, as a playwright, for introducing a new, extraordinarily modern, idea of comedy that combined psychological insight with social satire. But he was also one of the primary inventors of the art and science of self-invention and self-promotion. The Wilde Album by Merlin Holland (Wilde's grandson) is a fascinating and comprehensive examination of how Wilde the artist consciously conjured--through a complicated and savvy use of the media--Wilde the personality. Holland has assembled an enormous number of artifacts--from press clippings to political cartoons to theater programs --that map Wilde's emergence as a media celebrity and chart how this image was used against him as his popularity foundered in the face of scandal.

What makes The Wilde Album ultimately moving, and unique, is Holland's use of rare family photos and personal material. Juxtaposed with the vivaciousness of the public life, and in the context of the government's persecution of the artist, this more private material embodies and expresses the pain and needless tragedy of Wilde's life.

From Booklist

In 1882 young Oscar Wilde, then the talk of London, made a lecture tour of America. At its end, he was internationally famous, one of the first modern celebrities, known primarily for his personality. A singular attraction of his grandson's pocketbook-size offering of photos, cartoons, and autographs of Wilde and his circle is that it includes all 28 publicity portraits made for that triumphal tour. Another is the four snapshots from late in Wilde's life--after the poems, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the plays, and prison--of Wilde in Naples with Bosie Douglas, the young homosexual aristocrat who was the only begetter of Wilde's downfall ("The mere fact that he ruined my life makes me love him," Wilde said). Still others are the images of Wilde's strikingly beautiful wife and sons (the younger, Vivyan, was Holland's father; the surname was changed after the scandal) and Holland's judicious rehearsal of Wilde's greatest achievement, his career as a public figure. A sparkling complement to big, consequential biographies like Ellmann's Oscar Wilde (1987). Ray Olson

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (April 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080505894X
• ISBN-13: 978-0805058949
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,000,374 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an elegant, intimate scrapbook, April 23, 2000

By 

LA221 - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wilde Album (Hardcover)

This elegant little book is the first book about Oscar Wilde that I read and the one that made me fall in love with him. It's filled with beautiful pictures, some of which I haven't seen in other books. Besides the usual public pictures of Oscar, there are photos of personal objects like his wife Constance's wedding ring, letters and pages of manuscript, some in French, that show glimpses of the privet man behind the epigrams. There is enough biographical information to put the pictures in context; I knew very little about Oscar when I first read it and found everything to be quite clear. If you already have Vyvyan Holland's biography of Oscar (which would fit very nicely with this book, filling out the biographical information, as would Richard Ellmann's biography), there are more than enough pictures in this book that are not in Vyvyan Holland's book to make it worth adding to your library.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensible, July 25, 2000

By 

geoff wichert - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wilde Album (Hardcover)

Aside from the books Wilde actually wrote, this is the one book that should be on the shelf of everyone who loves Oscar. While its biographical story adds nothing new to the facts, the author's palpable sympathy for his grandfather is a welcome change from the cold and critical standard set by most critics of this pivotal genius and the wreckage of his life. More importantly, this small volume, which you can carry in a pocket, constitutes the largest single repository of Wilde memorabilia. Holland begins by lamenting the dissolution and loss of Wilde's scrapbooks and albums in the debtor sale of the author's entire household. By the end of his story his family's loss has taken on its true proportions as a loss to the rightful inheritance of all humankind.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "...walks between passion and poetry...", April 13, 2003

By 

"acominatus" (Johnson City, TN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wilde Album (Hardcover)

This volume is more touching and insightful than most
works about Oscar Wilde tend to be. It is filled with
the narrative commentary of Wilde's grandson,
Merlin Holland, who gives honest opinions as well
as factual detail about the various stages of
Oscar Wilde's life.
The treasures, however, are the multitudes of
photographs, memorabilia, and paintings that are
included -- as well as drawings, satirical cartoons
(mostly lampooning Oscar, both at Oxford and later
in life), and wonderful notations under the items.
The most interesting photographs, for me, are
the ones which were done by Napoleon Sarony. They
seem to touch a more thoughtful, poetic, dreamy
Oscar, rather than the posing bon vivant or the
deliberately provocative aesthete/decadent.
The volume does well to have one of those photos
on the cover, as well as having a different photo
beside the title page. The grotesque photos,
that almost make one cringe, though, are of
Oscar in a skirted Greek national costume
(with boots!) from April 1877; Oscar in a
checkered suit and bowler hat at Oxford in
1878, and Oscar at age 2 in a blue velvet
dress, a daguerreotype which has been color
tinted. The weirdest photos are of the
"blond tiger/panther" Lord Alfred Douglas,
would-be "friend" and lover of Oscar. His
eyes look vacant, haunted, cold in most of
the photos , except for the one on page 147,
in which he looks touchingly sensitive and
lonely...the caption below the picture says
it all: "Douglas aged 23. 'Your slim gilt
soul walks between passion and poetry. I know
Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly, was you
in Greek days,' Wilde wrote to him around that
time."
Truly a remarkable album of memories.