Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

By: Richard Ellmann  

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Average Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5

Publisher: Vintage

Release Date: 1988-11-05

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
On rereading it after twenty years . . . - I first read Ellmann's "Oscar Wilde" shortly after it was published more than twenty years ago. Reading it again has proved even more a pleasure. Not only is this the definitive biography of Wilde, it is the definitive literary biography of anyone. Ellmann's deep understanding of Wilde and his ability re-create the times Wilde lived in renders passages that are often breathtaking. To be reading about the writing of "De Profundis" and "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" on the same day that a judge struck down Proposition 8 made me think about how Wilde would have been regarded had he only lived twenty or thirty more years. A hundred and ten years after his death, he is even more relevant in so many ways. This book is beautiful, from the writing to the type to the binding. You can say of Wilde, Ellmann, the book itself: they don't make 'em like this anymore. Perhaps one of my ten favorite books ever.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
A Man Ahead of His Time - Ellmann's portrait of Wilde--the Irish scholar, poet, playwright, wit, aesthete, and "posing sodomite"--is a masterpiece. It won two awards upon its original publication in 1988, the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics' Circle Award. At 589 pages of text in the paperback edition (not including notes, bibliography, two appendices, and the index), this will stand as perhaps the most definitive biography of a quite colorful man who had the unhappy talent of taking like a moth to the flames of his Victorian era. He could chat up a room, dress to the nines, act camp, and deal in rough-trade dalliances with homosexual prostitutes when "gross indecency," homosexual acts not amounting to sodomy, were still considered a crime. Indeed, he was imprisoned for two years of hard labor (1895-97) when the father of his longtime but faithless lover decided to make a scapegoat of him. Today we might view him more as an Elton John or Brian Epstein, a successful man now able to enjoy society's gains in tolerance.

Wilde's literary output was not vast, when compared to that of some others. As he himself boasted, "I put my genius into my life, and only my talent into my works." Yet he is well remembered for his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his play The Importance of Being Earnest, and his 50,000-word De Profundis (the last of these a long letter of recrimination to his fickle lover, Lord Alfred Douglas). Wilde married Constance Lloyd in 1881 and had two sons with her, but he could not fairly be described as a family man and he ended his life apart from them. After he was released from prison he quickly left England for the continent, never to return, wandering the streets of Paris alone and spending what little money he had on alcohol. He died in 1900 at the age of 46, from spinal meningitis of uncertain etiology. Ellmann claims it was syphilitic in nature, but it also might have stemmed from an injury in jail that burst his right ear drum. After a nine-year burial elsewhere, Wilde's remains were transferred to the Père Lachaise Cemetery inside the Parisian city limits. This book contains many fine pictures of his life, including that of his tomb--adorned by a modernist angel whose male genitalia were vandalized, only to be replaced eventually by a silver prosthesis. Even more than a century after his death, Wilde still excites controversy.

Customer Review: 3 out of 5
The mind of a thoroughly well-informed man...is dreadful. OW - Here's some background; Richard Ellmann's "Oscar Wilde," was my personal selection for reading in the now infamous DFW Literary Society's book club. As such, I kind of felt a extra bit of attachment and responsibility to how the book reached and found others. Up front, the biographical parts of Oscar Wilde's life were very interesting and engaging. The parts were Ellmann delves into literary criticism, not so much.

I've always found literary lives and artistic souls quite interesting and entertaining. What I had hoped to get out of Ellmann's "Oscar" was something akin to this deliciously entertaining book: John Steinbeck, Writer: A Biography, but alas, it read closer to this: Lives of the Poets. "Lives of the Poets," is one that you don't want to tackle unless you really like poetry. It's not an easy read. Neither is "Oscar." Ellmann keeps the readers attention rapt when he engages in the details of Wilde's life and the brilliant candle he was early on and the train wreck of a life he seemed to seek out. It was almost like watching a reality show on Anna Nicole Smith except Wilde was talented, smart, witty, had something to say. They both very much liked men though and had campy tastes so the similarities are there.

Reading through "Oscar Wilde" will leave the most loquacious and eloquent speech-i-fiers reaching for a dictionary on most each and every page. There are some top dollar word choices in Ellmann's book which makes me think he developed a way to talk and communicate over the years that only reached a select set of University professorial readers. If you are an English PhD you will know doubt want to rank Ellman's "Wilde" with a Wildean excess of stars: five I'm thinking.

So our book club read, "Oscar Wilde" to the bitter end and we held a trial replete with judge, juror, prosecution, and defense. We put on trial again our dear Oscar and held him up to modern societal standards and found on the whole...3 votes against liking Oscar, 0 on his behalf. As you will read, should you dare try to crack open this book, Oscar was not so much into the responsibilites of life or working for a living or taking an egalatarian view of others--Oscar lived for the aesthetic beauty and was into style and wit and causing a scene. In many ways he was a large part of killing off the Victorian era through his aesthetic movement and connection to the decadents. See now I've lost you when I start throwing out high falutin' literary terms. I should have stuck to Oscar's life as should have Ellman. It's far more intersting.

Cut the book to half the size and focus on the drama and meaning behind Oscar's short time on this earth and to me Ellmann would have had one dandy of a book. As it is, you'll be able to tackle 10 pages at a time until Ellmann starts addressing Oscar's life. Not recommended as a book club read but do hold a mock trial for Oscar and dress up like dandies and bring flowers. That's all the rage--not Ellmann's "Oscar Wilde," so much.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Very complete and well written biography - I am a biography buff and am really enjoying this book. I have to read it with a dictionary but I like that. It is a very complete and heady biography. Check it out if you really want to sink your teeth into the life of Oscar Wilde.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Gets better with each reading - Ellmann's biography of Wilde is just about everything you can hope for: very richly detailed, extremely well written, and practically radiating with a love of the writer and his work. Wilde himself comes alive as a three dimensional figure, not an "icon" (and therefore, two dimensional figure) of any particular literary, social, or political movement. Too many critics have used Wilde for their own purposes and therefore diminished him. Ellmann respects Wilde--and the truth about Wilde--too much, and that integrity sets this book apart.

As a bonus, Wilde's entire literary and social circle come to life, including of course the redoubtable Bosie and the poor choices Wilde made (especially in his foolish litigation against Bosie's father). As a whole, the book does have an emotional wallop, as Wilde's genuine genius pays off with literary success, but like his character Dorian Gray, there was a very unseemly reality beneath the glitter, which brought his career and finally his life to a terribly cruel end.

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