The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde: An Intimate Biography

by Neil McKenna

Book Overview

'I have put my genius into my life but only my talent into my work'. So said Oscar Wilde of his remarkable life - a life more complex, more erotic, more troubled and more triumphant than any of his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465044387
• ISBN13: 9780465044382
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A magical read

I bought this book after reading a rave reviews in The Washington Post. It is everything that it promised to be: brave, fresh, exciting, and scrupulously researched. I have read most other biographies of Oscar over the years and really thought that there was little left to say. McKenna's biography has proved me wrong by proving not a wealth of new and exciting material, but also a wealth of new insights and interpretations. I cannot recommend this book too highly - it is a beautiful and magical read. At the best part of 600 pages, it's a long book, but for me it wasn't long enough. Incidentally, I don't understand the comments of the latest reviewer about footnotes. In my US hardback edition there are nearly 60 pages of notes which scrupulously source every quote.

An Oscar For Our Times

To me one of the saddest tragedies of a literary figure was the downfall of Oscar Wilde. At a time when his play _The Importance of Being Earnest_ was delivering its initial laughter on the London stage, Oscar was arrested for his homosexuality, imprisoned, and ruined. In his last years, he never stopped making people laugh, but he never wrote for humor again, and he died at forty-six. As an outstanding literary figure of his age and a real celebrity, he deserves and has gotten fine biographies, especially that of Richard Ellmann in 1988. But Oscar was more than an author and celebrity. Neil McKenna's new book, _The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde: An Intimate Biography_ (Basic Books) looks not only at Oscar's homosexuality, but at his commitment to the cause of the rights of homosexuals. "Gay Rights" in our time may still be controversial, but no one is shocked to learn that there is such a movement. In Oscar's time, homosexuality was criminal, a crime some thought worse than murder, and to have insisted on legal and social rights for homosexuals would have instantly brought on all the ostracism the Victorians could muster. Nonetheless, along with being unable to repress his own homosexuality, Oscar was unable to refrain from flaunting it, making it at least a subtext within his works, and campaigning in his fictional prose and poems for acceptance of homosexuality as a way of life. Oscar was a sexual revolutionary, a leader of others in the cause, and this large and well-researched biography concentrates on this aspect of an astonishingly complex, flawed, and lovable figure. Oscar's short life was entirely encompassed within the reign of Queen Victoria, a time when the first homosexuals were coming out, often in the Uranian cause, that being the term by which he (and eventually Oscar's cohorts) would designate themselves. Toward the end of the 1870s, Aestheticism promoted a new gospel of beauty through art, idealism, and politics, and Oscar and others turned to this cause as well, with the idealism and attention to beauty permanently identified with the Uranian cause. The movement had nothing like an elected leadership, but since Oscar wrote and was widely quoted, and since he wore his tonsure and clothes in the most exuberantly Aesthetic fashion, he was a beacon followed by many. Oscar married when he was thirty, and had two sons, but the marriage was a failure. Like many homosexuals, have been seeking marriage as a "cure". He was bored by marriage, but invigorated by the lust, frustration, and irritation that his great love Lord Alfred Douglas ("Bosie") gave him through the rest of his life. The two of them shared mountains of fine food, oceans of champagne, and battalions of lovers; McKenna's descriptions of Oscar's sexual appetites (anatomical details are not spared) are positively heroic. McKenna shows that in his ill-judged counterattacks on Queensbury, Bosie's father, Oscar was acting out "both an expression of his love for B

A life not so secret

This well written and painstakingly researched biography offers a fascinating glimpse into the private life of Oscar Wilde. Wilde's witty plays and daring novels ("The Picture of Dorian Gray") elevated him as a darling and "dandy" of Victorian society for a brief period of time before his arrogance and brazen homosexuality brought his career to a screeching halt and sent him to prison. Wilde discovered that he was gay late in life and despite his marriage to Constance Lloyd, he made up for lost time with a succession of "rent boys," and acquaintances from the Uranian Society. The author quotes extensively from the letters of Wilde, his lovers, contemporaries and friends to exhaustively trace his wanton ways. What is most remarkable about this book is that it not only paints a vivid portrait of Wilde but the other characters in his life are not glossed over. As compelling as Wilde are also the stories of his unhappy wife Constance, the great love of his life Bosie (Lord Alfred Douglas), Bosie's brother Drumlanrig and his doomed relationship with Lord Archibald Rosebery, Wilde's devoted friend (and former lover) Robbie Ross, and Bosie's vile father, Lord Queensberry, who brought about Wilde's downfall. The author also paints a vivid portrait of Victorian life and shows how Wilde's actions were a shock to the antiquated mores of the time. Gay audiences would be wise to read this book to gain an appreciation of Oscar Wilde's noble stance as well as be thankful that the attitudes of the world are at least not as bad as they were then.

Examines another side of the Wilde One

Oscar, Oscar, Oscar. So witty and wonderful it still hurts. In this terrific look at his life, author McKenna examines a side of Oscar that we've not been privy to before (at least not in this much detail). Somehow, one comes away from the book with more compassion for the too-smart-for-his-own-good Oscar. Perhaps that is because we learn that he was, like the rest of us, subject to the pangs and pains that come with daring to live life on your own terms. Excellent read!

A Different Wilde

For many years Richard Ellmann's biography of Oscar Wilde was considered the definitive work on Wilde. Having recently finished Ellmann's book and just now having read McKenna's book, McKenna offers many new insights. He is not afraid to delve into many of Wilde's "uranian" views. Ellmann has a sense of the straight outsider trying to understand a gay man's motives. McKenna offers a sympathetic view of Wilde's passion for "rent boys" and his loves for Bosie Douglas and Robbie Ross. McKenna is often sympathetic toward Bosie, but suspect toward Ross. By the end of McKenna's book Wilde is seen as a greatly flawed genius whose passions led to his destruction. "When the gods want to punish you, they give you what you want."