The Secret Life Of Oscar Wilde - Hardcover

McKenna, Neil

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465044387 ISBN 13: 9780465044382

Publisher: Basic Books, 2005

Synopsis

A fascinating and revealing insight into the troubled world of a literary genius Oscar Wilde said of himself, "I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works." Now, for the first time, Neil McKenna focuses on the tormented genius of Wilde's personal life, reproducing remarkable love letters and detailing Wilde's until-now unknown relationships with other men. McKenna has spent years researching Wilde's life, drawing on extensive new material, including never-before published poems and other writings. He also quotes from recently discovered trial statements made by male prostitutes and blackmailers about Wilde. McKenna provides explosive evidence of the political machinations behind Wilde's trials for sodomy, as well as his central role in the burgeoning gay world of Victorian London. Dazzlingly written and meticulously researched, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde fully charts Wilde's astonishing odyssey through London's sexual underworld and paints a frank and vivid psychological portrait of a troubled genius.

About this title

Review:

"Offers an entertaining and fascinating (sometimes jaw-dropping) insight into Victorian homosexual practices. He is outstanding". The Observer "The most important (book) to have been written about Wilde for many years". Irish Independent"

A tedious slog through the English author's sexual romps at the expense of his literary achievements. Wilde's "secret life" isn't exactly secret anymore, but British journalist McKenna aims to chronicle, in salacious detail, his relations with every boy from the time he arrived at Oxford's Magdalen College in 1874 through his imprisonment for "gross indecency" in 1895 and beyond. While reading classics at Oxford, the talented Irish poet was conflicted about his sexuality. His biographer charts Wilde's growing enchantment with "Greek love" in the form of flirtations with choirboys, artist Frank Miles and his "sodomite" circle, and many others. His reading of and friendship with Walter Pater, who urged followers to "grasp at any exquisite passion," helped convert Wilde to the Aesthetic Movement and the more "cultivated taste" of loving men. He also, however, attracted women, and his marriage seems to have been instigated by genuine feelings of love and protectiveness toward young Constance Lloyd, as well as the desire for some kind of stability to offset his erratic and dangerous cruising, blackmail by "rent boys," and police raids of pick-up places. Becoming a father did not dissuade Wilde from "playing with fire"; he proclaimed in his letters a "daring manifesto of amorality" and wrote to one young lover, "I myself would sacrifice everything for a new experience." The dizzying parade of transient bedfellows ended only when he met the love of his life, young Lord Alfred Douglas ("Bosie"), whose outraged father, the Marquis of Queensberry, eventually goaded Wilde into a libel suit and brought on his ruin. McKenna treats Wilde's work secondhand and only as "autobiographical prefigurations" of his homoerotic double life. In this author's hands, reading Wilde is reduced to a hunt for clues to his homosexuality; it's as titillating but trivial as finding "indiscreetly inscribed cigarette cases given to young men." Exhaustively documented, but ultimately reductive and incomplete. (Kirkus Reviews)

From the Publisher:

Sensational new biography of Wilde based on the author's discovery of some unpublished and little known source material, relating particularly to his sex life.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0465044387
• ISBN 13: 9780465044382
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 539