![]() ![]() Ellmann writes powerfully about Wilde’s trial and incarceration. ![]() Parodied and pilloried since he first dared to lecture in knee-breeches, Wilde was always swatting enemies away and poking their hypocrarses, and as his career picked up traction, the vultures suppurated on the sidelines until the blood-axe dropped on the sweaty mattress of boneheaded bastard Bosie. From Wilde’s unhumble beginnings as the son of two reputable writers, to his college days in the thrall of Ruskin and Pater, to his flowerings as a poet and spokesman for aestheticism, Ellmann presents the working Wilde, a complex contrarian and sneak-tongued snark, as he slowly becomes Wilde the Myth and Wilde the Wit. ![]() Richard Ellmann’s superlative bio ranks alongside the finest in the genre, with his earlier James Joyce volume already firmly in the pantheon. During the first period he was a scapegrace, during the second a scapegoat. Wilde had to live his life twice over, first in slow motion, then at top speed. ![]()
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