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Oscar Wilde : a life / Matthew Sturgis.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2021Copyright date: ©2021Edition: First American editionDescription: xv, 838 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780525656364
  • 0525656367
Uniform titles:
  • Oscar
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
Proem -- Part I. The star child. A small unruly boy -- A fair scholar -- Foundation scholarship -- Part II. The nightingale and the rose. Young Oxford -- Heart's yearnings -- Hellas! -- Specially commended -- Part III. The happy prince. A dream of fair women -- The jester and the joke -- Up to snuff -- An English poet -- Part IV. The remarkable rocket. The best place -- Go ahead -- This wide great world -- Bully boy -- Different aspects -- The dream of the poet -- Part V. The devoted friend. Over the Seine -- First drama -- Man of the day -- New relations -- In black and white -- L̕Amour de l̕Impossible -- Woman's world -- Part VI. The Young King. A man in hew -- A bad case -- Suggestive things -- The best society -- The dance of the seven veils -- Charming ball -- White and gold -- Part VII. The selfish giant. The eternal quest for beauty -- Feasting with panthers -- Brief summer months --Enemies of romance -- Scarlet Marquess -- Part VII. The house of judgment. The last first nights -- Hideous words -- The prosecutor -- Regina versus Wilde -- The torrent of prejudice -- Part IX. In Carcere Et Vinculis. The head of Medusa -- The system -- From the depths -- Part X. The fisherman and his soul. Asylum -- Artistic work -- Outcast men -- Bitter experience -- Part XI. The teacher of wisdom. The Parisian temple of pleasure -- Going south -- All over.
Summary: "The first full biography of Oscar Wilde in more than thirty years"-- Provided by publisher.
List(s) this item appears in: LGBTQ+ History Month
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library Biography WILDE, O. S935 Available 33111010742662
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"The first full biography of Oscar Wilde in more than thirty years"-- Provided by publisher.

Proem -- Part I. The star child. A small unruly boy -- A fair scholar -- Foundation scholarship -- Part II. The nightingale and the rose. Young Oxford -- Heart's yearnings -- Hellas! -- Specially commended -- Part III. The happy prince. A dream of fair women -- The jester and the joke -- Up to snuff -- An English poet -- Part IV. The remarkable rocket. The best place -- Go ahead -- This wide great world -- Bully boy -- Different aspects -- The dream of the poet -- Part V. The devoted friend. Over the Seine -- First drama -- Man of the day -- New relations -- In black and white -- L̕Amour de l̕Impossible -- Woman's world -- Part VI. The Young King. A man in hew -- A bad case -- Suggestive things -- The best society -- The dance of the seven veils -- Charming ball -- White and gold -- Part VII. The selfish giant. The eternal quest for beauty -- Feasting with panthers -- Brief summer months --Enemies of romance -- Scarlet Marquess -- Part VII. The house of judgment. The last first nights -- Hideous words -- The prosecutor -- Regina versus Wilde -- The torrent of prejudice -- Part IX. In Carcere Et Vinculis. The head of Medusa -- The system -- From the depths -- Part X. The fisherman and his soul. Asylum -- Artistic work -- Outcast men -- Bitter experience -- Part XI. The teacher of wisdom. The Parisian temple of pleasure -- Going south -- All over.

"This is a Borzoi Book" -- From title page verso.

"Originally published in hardcover, in a different form, in Great Britain by Apollo Books, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd., London, in 2018." -- From title page verso.

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