In this elegant and affectionate biography of one of the most controversial personalities of the nineteenth century, Barbara Belford breaks new ground in the evocation of Oscar Wilde's personal life and in our understanding of the choices he made for his art. Published for the centenary of Wilde's death, here is a fresh, full-scale examination of the author of The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray, a figure not only full of himself but enjoying life to the fullest.
Based on extensive study of original sources and animated throughout by historical detail, anecdote, and insight, the narrative traces Wilde's progression from his childhood in an intellectual Irish household to his maturity as a London author to the years of his European exile. Here is Wilde the Oxford Aesthete becoming the talk of London, going off to tour America, lecturing on the craftsmanship of Cellini to the silver miners of Colorado, condemning the ugliness of cast-iron stoves to the ladies of Boston. Here is the domestic Wilde, building sandcastles with his sons, and the generous Wilde, underwriting the publication of poets, lending and spending with no thought of tomorrow. And here is the romantic Wilde, enthralled with Lord Alfred Douglas in an affair that thrived on laughter, smitten with Florence Balcombe, flirting with Violet Hunt, obsessed with Lillie Langtry, loving Constance, his wife.
Vividly evoked are the theatres, clubs, restaurants, and haunts that Wilde made famous. More than previous accounts, Belford's biography evaluates Wilde's homosexuality as not just a private matter but one connected to the politics and culture of the 1890s. Wilde's timeless observations, whichmake him the most quoted playwright after Shakespeare, are seamlessly woven into the life, revealing a man of remarkable intellect, energy, and warmth.
Too often portrayed as a tragic figure--persecuted, imprisoned, sent into exile, and shunned--Wilde emerges from this intuitive portrait as fully human and fallible, a man who, realizing that his creative years were behind him, committed himself to a life of sexual freedom, which he insisted was the privilege of every artist.
Even now, we have yet to catch up with the man who exhibited some of the more distinguishing characteristics of the twentieth century's preoccupation with fame and zeal for self-advertisement. Wilde's personality shaped an era, and his popularity as a wit and a dramatist has never ebbed.
The essential entries from Dostoevsky's complete Diary, called his boldest experiment in literary form, are now available in this abridged edition; it is a uniquely encyclopedic forum of fictional and nonfictional genres.
... Kassel Lewis and Sylvia ( Surut ) . Religion : Jewish . Education : Harvard University , MA : BA , With Honors . Spouse : Linda Rannells ( m . 1951 , div . 1982 ) ; Margaret H. Marshall ( m . 1984 ) .
This volume contains more than 350 letters, the great majority of them previously unpublished, which are supplemented, as before, by scrupulous annotation and extensive cross-referencing; by a chronology covering the whole of Hardy's career ...
In The Camp Robber and Other Stories . Roslyn , New York : Walter J. Black , Inc. , 1979 . “ Tappan's Burro . ” In Tappan's Burro and Other Stories . New York : Simon and Schus. “ The Living Past . ” Zane Grey Collector 7.
Chronicles the life and career of American author Herman Melville, uncovering autobiographical elements in his diverse works, discussing the historical and cultural implications of his writing, and assessing his accomplishments as a writer.
Because of his Welsh name, Jenkins is often suggested as a model for Shakespeare's Welsh characters, particularly the schoolmaster Hugh Evans in The Merry Wives of Windsor; however his roots were not in Wales at all but in London and at ...
Quasimodo-Yeats Thomson Gale (Firm). The city is like a Dantesque hell , an alienating environment for everyone who happens to be trapped inside : At this point Quasimodo , having lost the initial enthusiasm of Giorno dopo giorno ...
Donaldson and a journalist, Newton S. Grimwood of the Chicago Evening Journal, disappeared in 1875 when a storm broke ... The invented narrator was a Gold Dust passenger, Mr. Harvey, who commences a ghoulish tale of entrapment in the ...
后期作品中贯穿着社会讽刺主题与高雅喜剧情调,主要描写战后那一代人愤世嫉俗与无忧无虑的人生态度。1937年沃第二次结婚,第二年发表他 ... 比金钱更有价值的光辉故居威廉·莎士比亚│William Shakespeare 从表面上看,美国马戏团老板费尼斯·巴纳姆(Phineas ...
他翻译过《少年维特之烦恼》,同时又是德国哲学的狂热信徒,但在大战中却强烈地反对德国与奥地利,并和墨索里尼一起推行战争政策,不过后来和墨索里尼分道扬镳了。现在我真想见一见这个“敌人”。但是由于害怕吃闭门羹,便给他留了一张写着我的旅馆地址的名片。