Oscar Wilde PDF
Preview Oscar Wilde
PRAISE FOR OSCAR WILDE BY RICHARD ELLMANN “So brilliant is Ellmann’s account of Wilde’s morning and afternoon that dusk seems to fall swiftly and angrily.… Ellmann is our foremost literary biographer.… Wilde’s life was a work of art, and so is this biography.” —Stephen Becker, Chicago Sun-Times “Written with consummate elegance and grace.” —Denis Donoghue, New Republic “Monumental.” —Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times “The best literary biography of the decade—the best written and the juiciest.” —Edmund White “A splendid biography … Mr. Ellmann’s interpretations of Wilde’s essays, stories, poems, plays, letters and conversation—filled with ‘pontifical impudence,’ much of it still astonishingly brilliant and unfailingly funny without being cruel—enlarge this excellent book.” —Richard Locke, Wall Street Journal “The best book of this or many a year … Wilde is brought unforgettably to life with his curious courage, his longing for self-destruction, his vulnerability and his irresistible charm.” —John Mortimer “Enthralling.” —Manchester Guardian “A work of biographic art … This portrait of the Victorian Age’s most tragic figure surpasses Ellmann’s well-known life of Joyce.” —Leon Edel ALSO BY RICHARD ELLMANN Yeats: The Man and the Masks The Identity of Teats James Joyce Eminent Domain Ulysses on the Liffey Golden Codgers The Consciousness of Joyce Four Dubliners FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, NOVEMBER 1988 Copyright © 1987 by The Estate of Richard Ellmann Copyright © 1984 by Richard Ellmann All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton Ltd., London, in 1987 and in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1988. Grateful acknowledgment is made to Merlin Holland for permission to use previously published and unpublished material by or relating to Oscar Wilde that is in the copyright of the Holland family. “Oscar Wilde at Oxford,” by Richard Ellmann, was originally published in THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS. Owing to limitations of space, all other acknowledgments of permission to use previously published material will be found following the index. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ellmann, Richard, 1918– Oscar Wilde. Bibliography: p. 1. Wilde, Oscar, 1854—1900—Biography. 2. Authors, Irish—19th century—Biography. I. Title. [PR5823.E38 1988b] 828′.809 [B] 88-40040 eISBN: 978-0-80415112-2 v3.1 To Lucy Ellmann Contents Cover Other Books by This Author Title Page Copyright Dedication Acknowledgments Introduction BEGINNINGS I Toil of Growing Up II Wilde at Oxford III Rome and Greece IV An Incomplete Aesthete ADVANCES V Setting Sail VI Declaring His Genius VII Indoctrinating America VIII Countering the Renaissance IX Two Kinds of Stage X Mr and Mrs Wilde EXALTATIONS XI Disciple to Master XII The Age of Dorian XIII Hellenizing Paris XIV A Good Woman, and Others XV A Late Victorian Love Affair XVI Sailing into the Wind DISGRACE XVII ‘I Am the Prosecutor in This Case’ XVIII Doom Deferred XIX Pentonville, Wandsworth, and Reading XX Escape from Reading EXILE XXI Prisoner at Large XXII The Leftover Years Epilogue Notes Select Bibliography Appendix A Appendix B About the Author Permissions Acknowledgments Illustrations appear following pages this page, this page, this page, and this page
Description:The list of books you might like
