Dimensions
161 x 251 x 68mm
Oscar Wilde knew and corresponded with many leading political, literary and artistic figures of the nineteenth century.
This edition, marking the centenary of his death, contains over 1500 of his letters and anyone unfamiliar with Wilde as a correspondent will find it packed with unexpected delights. Wonderfully fluent in style, when read aloud they must be the nearest we shall ever come to hearing his legendary conversation and they bear that most familiar of Wildean hallmarks - the lightest of touches for even the most serious of subjects.
The letters comment openly on his life and work from the early years of undergraduate friendships, through his year-long lecture tour in America as a striving and ambitious young "Professor of Aesthetics", to the short period of fame and success in the early 1890s followed by his disgrace and imprisonment. The most poignant section covers the five long years between his downfall and his premature death in exile at forty-six. Even in adversity, his humour does not desert him and he is able to share with his readers that greatest of gifts - the ability to smile at one's own misfortune.
