Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 828.809
EAN num: 9780394554846
ISBN number: 0394554841
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 680
Printing Date: January 12, 1988
Publishing house: Knopf
Release Date: January 12, 1988
Sale Popularity Level: 260450
Studio: Knopf
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Product Description:
The biography sensitive to the tragic pattern of the story of a great subject: Oscar Wilde - psychologically and sexually complicated, enormously quotable, central to a alluring cultural world and someone whose life assumed an unbearably dramatic shape.
Amazon.com Review:
Richard Ellmann capped an illustrious career in biography (his James Joyce is considered one of the masterpieces of the 20th century) with this life of Oscar Wilde, which won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and Pulitzer Prize on its original publication in 1988. Ellmann's account of Wilde's extravagantly operatic life as poet, playwright, aesthete, and martyr to sexual morality is notable not only for the full portrait it gives of Wilde, but also for Ellmann's assessment of his subject's literary greatness; both aims are served by a plethora of quotations from Wilde's own work and correspondence. Wilde straddled the line between the Victorian age and the modern world as he did everything in life ... with impeccable style.
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Rated by buyers 
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I couldn't believe the depths Ellmann takes the reader in his biography of Oscar Wilde. Everything; every aspect of Wilde's life is thoroughly explored. The best single word review of this book would be just that; thorough.
On the other hand, the text is very dry at times, and you may find yourself frusterated. It always seems that, too often, biographies fall victim of the "dry writer."
Rated by buyers -
Imagine the challenges facing a Wilde biographer: the contradictions of an outrageous, larger-than-life subject whose brittle public persona masked his inner torments; Wilde's enormous drive, which led to sucess and acclaim, but also set in motion his ultimate fall from grace. Worse: so much already written, including Wilde's own glittering one-liners - what could anyone presume to add to the already crowded record?
Professor Ellmann, who worked for almost twenty years on this book, doesn't fail to deliver. In what will clearly be the definitive biography, he lays out details of Wilde's life, illuminates the work, and cuts through the brilliant and brittle public persona to show us Wilde's soul. All of this is accomplished with wit, intelligence and compassion -- this book confirmed Ellmann's status as the English professor I always wished I'd had. Professor Ellmann doesn't make a single misstep in this astonishing biography.
His final assessment of Wilde:
"He belongs to our world more than to Victoria's. Now, beyond the reach of scandal, his best writings validated by time, he comes before us still, a towering figure, laughing and weeping, with parables and paradoxes, so generous, so amusing, and so right."
If I may be forgiven a paraphrase of Ellmann's own words, this biography is also "generous, amusing, and so right."
Rated by buyers -
Just as to know James Joyce, discover his daughter, the spark of his own genius.
Lady Wilde was a writer and Irish revolutionary who raised her son to infiltrate the highest ranks of the empire and expose their foibles, faults, cruelties and hidden shames, which he so fully did through his theatre work and other writings. He was investigating the widespread homosexuality of the British aristocracy when he was arested for his prying and blamed for that which he himself investigated and reported. He was silenced through breaking imprisonment (read his post-prison poetry, and the uneven yet revelatory De Profundis written from prison) which debilitated, discouraged and killed him a few short years after his release.
TO know Wilde, know his mother: Speranza, Lady Wilde, whose wonderful works of Irish history and legends are now available on amazon.com only in Spanish translation. Several good biographies are also available at unattainable price.
Know alos his son. Wilde was a loving family man who wrote wonderful bedtime stories for his own beloved children. What broke him in prison was losing them, as he writes in De Profundis.
Ellman's is a fine biography. Find out far more about Wilde than the popular and shallow slander urgently promoted by the Empire
Rated by buyers -
I remember reading this book when I was 16 and being blown away by the erudition. Even to this day it's probably the most erudite biography I've ever read. The scholarly weight and depth of this book is tremendous. It is amazingly comprehensive. This is the kind of book that takes 20 years to write and must be a labor of love for the writer--the writer must really love his subject, in this case, Wilde. And one has every indication from the book that Richard Ellman did. His portrait of Wilde is no less sympathetic as it is complete. This must be the definitive biography which all other Wilde bios should be measured against. A superlative achievement.
David Rehak
author of "A Young Girl's Crimes"
Rated by buyers -
I had just finished this book ten minutes ago and I am completely in love with the man. His life was one of both tragedy and creativity. I felt so sad for him in the last part of his life. He was an amazing soul and this bio accented it. A must read!
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