Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) was an Anglo-Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and short story writer. One of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day, known for his barbed and clever wit, he suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned after being convicted in a famous trial of "gross indecency" for his homosexuality.

Biographies

• After Wilde's death, his friend Frank Harris wrote a biography, Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions. This is generally regarded as being very unreliable, although entertaining. Of his other close friends, Robert Sherard, Robert Ross, Charles Ricketts, and Lord Alfred Douglas variously published biographies, reminiscences or correspondence.
• An account of the argument between Frank Harris, Lord Alfred Douglas and Oscar Wilde as to the advisability of Wilde's prosecuting Queensberry can be found in the preface to George Bernard Shaw's play The Dark Lady of the Sonnets.
• In 1946, Hesketh Pearson published The Life of Oscar Wilde (Methuen), containing materials derived from conversations with Bernard Shaw, George Alexander, Herbert Beerbohm Tree and many others who had known or worked with Wilde. This is a lively read, although inevitably somewhat dated as to overall approach. It gives a particularly vivid impression of what Wilde's conversation must have been like.
• In 1954 Vyvyan Holland published his memoir Son of Oscar Wilde. It was revised and updated by Merlin Holland in 1999.
• In 1975 H. Montgomery Hyde published Oscar Wilde: A Biography.
• In 1983 Peter Ackroyd published The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde.
• In 1987 Richard Ellmann published Oscar Wilde, a very minute biography.
• In 1997 Merlin Holland published a book entitled The Wilde Album. This rather small volume seems to contain at least twice its size worth of pictures and other Wilde memorabilia, much of which had not been published before. It includes 27 pictures taken by the portrait photographer Napoleon Sarony, one of which graces the beginning of this article.
• 1999 saw the publication of Oscar Wilde on Stage and Screen written by Robert Tanitch. This book is a comprehensive record of Oscar's life and work as presented on stage and screen from 1880 until 1999. It includes cast lists and snippets of reviews.
• 2003 saw the publication of the first complete account of Wilde's sexual and emotional life in The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde by Neil McKenna (published by Century/Random House).
• 2005 saw the publication of The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde, by literary biographer Joseph Pearce. It explores the Catholic sensibility in his art, his interior suffering and dissatisfaction, and his lifelong fascination with the Catholic Church which led to his deathbed conversion.
• A multiple-issue 'chapter' of Dave Sim's comic book Cerebus the Aardvark, entitled Melmoth, (later collected as a single volume under that title) retells the story of Wilde's final months with the names and places slightly altered to fit the world of the Cerebus storyline, while Cerebus himself spends most of the chapter as a passive observer.

Biographical films, television series and stage plays

• Two films of his life were released in 1960. The first to make it to the theaters was Oscar Wilde starring Robert Morley. Then came The Trials of Oscar Wilde starring Peter Finch. At the time homosexuality was still punishable by a jail sentence in the UK and both films were rather cagey in touching on the subject without being explicit about it.
• In the summer of 1977 Vincent Price began performing in the one man play Diversions and Delights. Written by John Gay and directed by Joe Hardy the premise of the play is that an aging Oscar Wilde, to earn some much needed money, gave a lecture on his life in a Parisian Theater on November 28, 1899 (just a year before his death). The play was a success everywhere it was performed, except for its New York City run. It was revived in 1990 in London with Donald Sinden in the role.
• In 1978 London Weekend Television produced a television series about the life of Lillie Langtry entitled Lillie. In it Peter Egan played Oscar. The bulk of his scenes portrayed their close friendship up to and including their tours of America in 1882. Thereafter, he was in a few more scenes leading up to his trials in 1895.
• Michael Gambon portrayed Wilde on British Television in 1983 in the three part BBC series Oscar concentrating on the trial and following prison term.
• 1988 saw Nickolas Grace playing Wilde in Ken Russell's film Salome's Last Dance.
• A fuller look at his life, without any of the restrictions of the 1960 films, is Wilde (1997) starring Stephen Fry. Fry (an acknowledged Wilde scholar) also appeared as Wilde in 1993 in the short-lived American television series "Ned Blessing."
• Wilde appears as a supporting character in Tom Stoppard's 1997 play The Invention of Love.
• Oscar: In October 2004, a stage musical by Mike Read about Oscar Wilde closed after just one night at the Shaw Theatre in Euston after a severe critical mauling.