The Secret Life Of Oscar Wilde

The Secret Life Of Oscar Wilde
by Neil McKenna

The Secret Life Of Oscar Wilde
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Book Summary Information

Author: Neil McKenna
Edition: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2005-05-10
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 539

Book Reviews of The Secret Life Of Oscar Wilde

Book Review: all the sordid details you suspected confirmed.
Summary: 5 Stars

this book is hard to put down,for a wilde fan impossible.even by todays standards which are more lenient toward the Uranian persuasion,Wilde would have landed on a sex offender list due to his infatuation leading to action with underage boys.As i was reading i wonder if the marquiss of Queensbury,raving maniac that he no doubt was, might have saved his son Bosie from jail by being the first to spill the beans on Wilde and his Uranian guruship. The Marquis always threatened to go to Scotland Yard about Wilde and i was wondering if he hadn't already made some kind of deal with prosecutors to get his son Bosie off. Since Bosie wasn't underage when he was with Wilde,Queensbury might have been aware of his son and Wilde's criminal activity in respect to jueveniles. At the end of his life Wide admitted to his admirers that he was indeed guilty and he felt contempt for his adorers that tried to flatter him by believing he was completely innocent.Wilde's genius is undoubted and his works are still worshipped,but I'm reminded of an old saying,"Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy".Wilde wouldn't have wanted to be a hero anyway.Somewhere he must have made a quotation about this.It seems from a read of this book that Wilde really valued his privacy and his pronouncements in contradiction of this quality was more the result of his court defense from prosecution than to be a hero of the "gay movement".Alot of the info contained in this book a person could question as to the reliability and the sources.Still it is a well written and convincing work.The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about,(unless it's Scotland Yard).

Summary of The Secret Life Of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde said of himself, “I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my work.? Now, for the first time, Neil McKenna focuses on the tormented genius of Wilde?s personal life, reproducing remarkable love letters and detailing Wilde?s until-now unknown relationships with other men.McKenna has spent years researching Wilde?s life, drawing on extensive new material, including never-before published poems as well as recently discovered trial statements made by male prostitutes and blackmailers about Wilde. McKenna provides explosive evidence of the political machinations behind Wilde?s trials for sodomy, as well as his central role in the burgeoning gay world of Victorian London. Dazzlingly written and meticulously researched, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde fully charts Wilde?s astonishing odyssey through London?s sexual underworld and paints a frank and vivid psychological portrait of a troubled genius.

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