Flamboyant Oscar Wilde

 

This biography of Oscar Wilde is presented as part of an Anglo-Irish family, an actor with a compelling intergenerational tragedy.

Sir William Wilde, his father, a prominent Dublin doctor and folklorist and mother Jane, a political poet “Speranza”. Sir William, a Victorian polymath, expert in aural medicine, and who was appointed Queen Victoria’s doctor in Ireland, died in 1876 aged 61 while his wife suffered a libel case for advocating a rebellion against colonialism in 1848, which brought her son’s downfall in 1895. Sir William laid the foundations for Celtic cultural renaissance as he believed that culture would eventually establish a common ground between the privileged and the poor, Protestant and Catholic. He stood accused of sexually assaulting a young female patient, the scandal and trial send shockwaves thorugh Dublin society. The Young Oscar Wilde was sent away to school when the scandal broke. She opened a salon and was known as the most scintillating hostess of her day as she passed her infectious delight in the art of living to Oscar.

Oscar and his elder brother Willie grew up in an liberal family of ardent orators and writers and this definitely helped Oscar to become one of the world’s finest conversationalists with ample wit and erudition. After William’s death the three Wildes moved to London. Oscar’s plays were super hits. But most of the time financial security eluded them all. Oscar’s most celebrated play by living for pleasure, Eillie seems to have some of Oscar’s brilliance with only hardly any work ethic. Both were full of charm, complacency and lazy.

The Fall of the House of Wilde brings out the best of Oscar’s devoted wife Constance, and Oscar’s sparkling talent and fame. However, the family paid a big prize for promoting liberal values at odds with contemporary mores. Emer gives an in depth study and a fresh perceptive account of one of the most prominent characters of the late nineteenth century and the most dazzling Irish American families of Victorian times and places widely known Oscar Wilde, a precociously flamboyant intellectual,  in the broader social, political and religious context. Emer is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin with an MA in Life writing and a PhD in literature at UEA.

The Fall of The House of Wilde:Oscar Wilde and His Family by Emer O’Sullivan, Bloomsbury £25, 512 pages