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Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

A Life

by Matthew Sturgis
Paperback
Publication Date: 05/09/2019

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'Some said my life was a lie but I always knew it to be the truth; for like the truth it was rarely pure and never simple' Oscar Wilde, 3 days before his death

Oscar Wilde was one of the great personalities of his age. As paradox was the motive force of his wit, so it was the defining motif of his life. He was an Irish Protestant fascinated by the Catholic church, an English writer who claimed to be better understood in France, a homosexual man married with two small children, an artist who achieved fame before he produced art, a dandy who made artificiality a natural mode of expression.

Wilde stood in symbolic relations to his times. His prose and his actions confronted both the materialism and the hypocrisy of the Victorian Age. It was a dazzling display, of wit, intellect, daring, and - eventually - recklessness. And he paid the price for it.

In this rich, humane and colourful new biography, the critically acclaimed biographer Matthew Sturgis considers the paradoxes and dramatic ironies of Wilde's life. It is a life that seems to take on the force and colour of fiction. The arc of his career, from early promise and initial disappointment, via huge triumph and spectacular self-indulged disgrace to an ultimate pathos-touched resolution, might follow the trajectory of one of Wilde's own fairy stories, but it is in its detail, its awkwardness, and its humanity that the real truth and drama lie.
ISBN:
9781848548695
9781848548695
Category:
Biography: general
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
05-09-2019
Publisher:
Hodder & Stoughton General Division
Country of origin:
United Kingdom
Dimensions (mm):
234x153mm
Matthew Sturgis

Matthew Sturgis is a writer with a particular enthusiasm for the cultural world of the late-nineteenth century and is the author of acclaimed biographies of Aubrey Beardsley and Walter Sickert.

He has also contributed to the TLS, Daily Telegraph and Independent on Sunday. He is a member of the Oscar Wilde Society and contributes reviews to their journal The Wildean.

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