Title: Oscar Wilde
Description: Though critics previously condemned Frank Harris’ Oscar Wilde as self-congratulatory, libelous, and downright false, the biography is increasingly viewed as sincerely sympathetic. It gives modern readers an insider’s portrait of Wilde’s world – from the perspective of a man who was as much an outsider to proper middle-class English society as the poet-playwright had been. In the biography, Harris analyzes the early danger signs in Wilde’s conformity-flouting behavior and their sad culmination when the defeated Wilde lived out his last days in France. He does not discuss Wilde’s homosexuality per se, but his addiction to living beyond his means and toward entertaining a “mentor” image to lower-class youths incapable of appreciating his talents. Harris was convinced that Wilde’s artistic image of himself had become hopelessly entangled with his inability to recognize the self-destructiveness of his behavior.
Subjects: Biography & Autobiography, Nonfiction