Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #113800 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

The Manchester Evening News
Extraordinary, intensely passionate and quite beautiful.

Attitude
... a bustling, revealing and downright moving portrayal of thwarted genius.

Irish Independent
"Neil McKenna's book is the most important one to have been written about Wilde for many years."

Customer Reviews

The subject that dared not speak its name ...
Although the life of Oscar Wilde has been written countless times in the century since his death, surprisingly little has been written about his homosexuality. It has been for biographers the subject that dared not speak its name. It is spoken of in connection with his fall from grace, his trial and imprisonment of course, but otherwise the subject is passed over in as much silence as possible. It remains for us now almost as much as it did for his earliest biographers “The Problem of Oscar Wilde’s Inversion” and every sympathetic author strives to find a way of explaining it away. Neil McKenna's excellent book for the first time examines the evidence of Oscar Wilde's sexual orientation from his earliest youth and proves that the relationship which led to his fall was no aberration. Those who have read previous biographies may be surprised to learn that there is a secret life of Oscar Wilde to reveal but reading this book will certainly introduce a Wilde few people know.

Oscar once said that every great man has his disciples and it is usually Judas who writes the biography. This book is an honourable exception.

A terrific read
This is a wonderful and amazing book. It is the sort of book that you want to read twice - I'm already on my second reading, savouring every moment. Why it is wonderful and amazing?
Well, in the first place it's is a stunning biography. Neil McKenna has uncovered masses of amazing new material about Oscar Wilde, especially about his sex life and about the conspiracy to send him to prison, and has produced a truly psychologically convincing biography. The whole thing feels very fresh, very new. I felt as if I were reading about Oscar Wilde's
life for the very first time. One of the best and most striking things about the book is its readability. McKenna writes with a beautiful, almost poetic clarity. Though a long book, every page is an absolute pleasure to read. I can't remember ever reading a more beautifully written biography, by turns taut, exciting, resonant, witty and touching. Everyone who likes Oscar Wilde must read this book.

A triumphant account of Oscar's sexual odyssey
Neil McKenna is one of the very best gay writers of our generation. His book is a triumphant, uncensored account of Oscar Wilde's sexual odyssey through the hotels, restaurants, bars and backstreets of 19th-century London's homosexual underworld, the story of his sex life with poets and students, rent boys and blackmailers. All of this is set against a fascinating, sometimes hilarious and ultimately moving interpretation of the controversial sexual themes in Oscar's plays, poems, essays and novels - work which often shocked the press and polite society but won Oscar legions of adoring young fans and acolytes. And, on top of that, we have the story of Oscar's involvement with an elite coterie of poets and writers who were slowly clawing their way towards a modern interpretation of the noble tradition of Greek love and devoting their literary and political efforts to 'The Cause' of tolerance and liberation for men who loved other men.