Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius
Why, readers may ask, yet another book about Oscar Wilde?  "Because his life is a continual allegory," the author tells us in her introduction, "and his social, political, and artistic views, which went right to the heart of Victorian society, are no less threatening today." In contrast to earlier biographers likeHesketh PearsonandRichard Ellmann, Belford emphasizes the cultural context in which Wilde (1854-1900) operated as both shrewd self-publicist and provocateur. Researching previous biographies of Violet Hunt and Bram Stoker, Belford immersed herself in the florid atmosphere of London during the 1890s, the decade of Wilde's greatest fame and infamy, and she uses this knowledge to deepen our understanding of the writer's relationship with his times. In particular, the West End theater district comes to life as the scene of Wilde's greatest triumphs as a playwright (fromLady Windermere's FantoThe Importance of Being Earnest) as well as of his introduction to "a homosocial world that had existed since Elizabethan times." Victorian society could not tolerate Wilde's relatively open homosexuality, however, and two 1895 trials ended with his conviction on charges of "gross indecency." He served two years in prison and died three years after his release, exiled, poor, and alone. Yet Belford stresses not Wilde's tragedy but his triumph. To the end, he was a gaily subversive writer whose works "demonstrate the value of graciousness, charm, and wit" even as they assert "the right of art and language to shock, to undermine, and to unsettle."--Wendy Smith