Declare Regarding Books Oscar Wilde
| Title | : | Oscar Wilde |
| Author | : | Richard Ellmann |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 736 pages |
| Published | : | November 5th 1988 by Vintage (first published 1987) |
| Categories | : | Biography. Nonfiction. History. Biography Memoir. Classics. Literature. Criticism. Literary Criticism |
Richard Ellmann
Paperback | Pages: 736 pages Rating: 4.24 | 3131 Users | 152 Reviews
Rendition Conducive To Books Oscar Wilde
Wilde had to live his life twice over, first in slow motion, then at top speed. During the first period he was a scapegrace, during the second a scapegoat. Richard Ellmann’s superlative bio ranks alongside the finest in the genre, with his earlier James Joyce volume already firmly in the pantheon. From Wilde’s unhumble beginnings as the son of two reputable writers, to his college days in the thrall of Ruskin and Pater, to his flowerings as a poet and spokesman for aestheticism, Ellmann presents the working Wilde, a complex contrarian and sneak-tongued snark, as he slowly becomes Wilde the Myth and Wilde the Wit. Parodied and pilloried since he first dared to lecture in knee-breeches, Wilde was always swatting enemies away and poking their hypocrarses, and as his career picked up traction, the vultures suppurated on the sidelines until the blood-axe dropped on the sweaty mattress of boneheaded bastard Bosie. Ellmann writes powerfully about Wilde’s trial and incarceration. The particularity of detail is breathtaking and presented always as a coherent, flowing and utterly captivating narrative, and when Wilde emerges from Reading into the beautiful and disgusting world, into a life of humiliation, penury, skin problems, loneliness, and separation in exile, you would need a heart of stone not to laugh at the preposterous imbecilities of the society Wilde was spoofing. The harsh brainless stupidity of Victorian England collapsed, and Wilde is remembered rightly as an avatar for truth, kindness, and zingy one-liners for every occasion. This fabulously exhaustive and definitive bio has the last word on Wilde, and since no one is ever likely to top it, is essential reading for all Oscarites.
Particularize Books During Oscar Wilde
| Original Title: | Oscar Wilde |
| ISBN: | 0394759842 (ISBN13: 9780394759845) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Oscar Wilde |
| Literary Awards: | Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography (1989), National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography/Autobiography (1988) |
Rating Regarding Books Oscar Wilde
Ratings: 4.24 From 3131 Users | 152 ReviewsColumn Regarding Books Oscar Wilde
This is a dense and detailed biography. I enjoyed it even if it was slow going. The more one read, the more enchanting the work became, probably because Wilde himself is so much larger than life. From the beginning he was outrageous and deliberately cultivated such a persona. And from the beginning self-destructive tendencies were apparent; he seemed always to be walking on the edge of a precipice, the question being when and how he would tumble. His personality was in some ways like that ofThe unreadable in pursuit of the dislikeable.Turgid prose that doesn't know when to stop, at times awkward construction, and far too little about the effect this ghastly man had on his wife and children. One has to feel sorry for OW but if ever a man was author of his own downfall, he was the man. I know things now about the late nineteenth century that I wish I didn't. In fact, I wish I hadn't read this book at all.
Wilde had to live his life twice over, first in slow motion, then at top speed. During the first period he was a scapegrace, during the second a scapegoat. Richard Ellmanns superlative bio ranks alongside the finest in the genre, with his earlier James Joyce volume already firmly in the pantheon. From Wildes unhumble beginnings as the son of two reputable writers, to his college days in the thrall of Ruskin and Pater, to his flowerings as a poet and spokesman for aestheticism, Ellmann presents
A wonderful biography of Wilde's life and everything that was happening to him while he wrote his many great works, like The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, as well as his short stories, like my favorite, The Happy Prince. I knew some facts surrounding his arrest and imprisonment before reading this but didn't know a lot, like how it started with his libel suit against his lover's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, so that was of particular interest, as was Wilde's
A pretty good bio on Wilde. I don't know an insane amount on Wilde's personal life, so I can't state how accurate it is in regards to timeline, but I am going to assume that it is pretty accurate considering his substantial research. WAS LONG BUT LIKE WHAT BIO ISNT.
A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.
I object to the ending. It was too sad. Why did he have to die?But in all seriousness, the final lines of this book did make me cry. Here: "His work survived as he claimed it would. We inherit his struggle to achieve supreme fictions in art, to associate art with social change, to bring together individual and social impulse, to save what is eccentric and singular from being sanitized and standardized, to replace a morality of severity by one of sympathy. He belongs to our world more than to
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