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Oscar's Books: A Journey Around the Library of Oscar Wilde

Oscar's Books: A Journey Around the Library of Oscar Wilde

by ThomasWright (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2009

    $4.24
Synopsis

For Wilde, as for many people, reading could be as powerful and transformative an experience as falling in love. He devoured books, talked books, luxuriated in books and lavished books on his friends- they played, too, a vital part in his seductions of young men. Oscar's Books tells the story of Wilde's life through his reading, from his childhood in Dublin, where he was nurtured on Celtic myth, Romantic poetry and Irish folklore; through his undergraduate years in which he built his intellect out of books; to prison, where his friends supplied him with literature which saved his sanity; to his final years in Paris where he consoled himself with old favourites such as Flaubert and Balzac. Fresh, utterly engaging and wholly original, Oscar's Books is an entirely new kind of biography.

$4.24

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 384
 Publisher: Vintage
Published: 03 Sep 2009
ISBN 10: 0099502720
ISBN 13: 9780099502722
Book Overview: A fresh and delightful examination of the character of Oscar Wilde by looking at him through the prism of the books he read.

Media Reviews
Entertaining and highly original, Oscar's Books is animated by a real intellectual passion. It should be read by anyone interested in Wilde or in the art of literary biography * Peter Ackroyd *
Wholly original book about reading, its comforts and its perils, an eccentric landmark in the art of literary biography * Mail on Sunday *
The premise of the book is gorgeous...the book is both thorough and intriguing * Guardian *
No other scholar of Wilde has succeeded so well in moving into Oscar's head * Irish Times *
A remarkable new biography...the result is an original and compelling book * Literary Review *
Author Bio
Of Anglo-Irish descent, Thomas Wright was educated at Saint Thomas More School, Bedford. Overwhelmed by The Picture of Dorian Gray in his teens, he applied for Magdalen, Oscar Wilde's college at Oxford, and was accepted; during his time there he occupied a room containing the fireplace that once stood in the library of Wilde's Chelsea home. He has frequently lectured on Wilde and written countless articles about him. He is the author of Oscar Wilde's Table Talk. Thomas Wright lives in Genoa and London, and sometimes writes about subjects unconnected with his hero.