The Oscar Wilde Story

Intentions

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Lady Windermere's Fan

The Birthday of the Infanta

The Portrait of Mr. W.H.

Teleny

The Trials of Oscar Wilde

De Profundis

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Few writers have captured the texture of life as well as Oscar Wilde. Brimming with powerful wit and symbolism, the unique literary voice of Oscar Wilde has delighted audiences for well over one hundred years.

Each of the titles appearing in this superbly curated collection, The Oscar Wilde Story, were selected and edited by Philip Dossick.

It is the story of an exhilarating man: his life and loves; his trials and humiliations, his time in prison, a riotous chaotic life lived in all its glory and unavoidable sadness, providing the reader with a portrait of a complex, driven artist.

Dossick plumbs every aspect of Wilde's life: his relationships with the unknown and the famous, his expatriate years in France; his gift for compassion and love; the savage public pressures that overwhelmed his quest for happiness and self-expression, and his passionate battle for sexual identity, self-fulfillment and justice.

Wilde's tale is both instructive and cautionary, capturing a life almost too terrifying for words.

It is, as its subject demands, an intimate portrait of Oscar Wilde, through his own words.

OSCAR WILDE (18541900) was an Irish poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, and short story writer. He is perhaps best known for Salomé, The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, De Profundis, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, and The Picture of Dorian Gray. He is considered a literary colossus, and a central figure in the development of the modern novel.

He was notably celebrated as an artist persecuted for his homosexuality, a martyr for the cause of gay rights, and prosecuted for "acts of gross indecency with other male persons," (sodomy) subsequently found guilty, and sentenced to two years hard labor at Reading Gaol prison. He died at the age of 45 and was buried in Paris.

Dettagli