About this ebook
In researching his monumental biography of Wilde Matthew Sturgis found, in every major archive, sheets of foolscap in Wilde's distinctive handwriting, setting down a series of unfamiliar epigrams - unpublished try-outs. There were fascinating new discoveries.
He uncovered dozens of unfamiliar and previously ungathered anecdotes about Wilde: sidelights on his days in Oxford, London, America and Paris and beyond, by society hostesses, men-about-town, actors, lawyers, minor litterateurs, artists and politicians, diligently setting down his actions, his mannerisms and above all his sayings.
The items in this volume are all small additions to the Wilde story: some unfamiliar, others unexpected, they enrich and alter the picture of his life.
About the author
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900) was born in Dublin. He attended Trinity College Dublin, and - later - Magdalen College, Oxford. During a life crowded with incident he achieved great success as a playwright, and fame as a wit.
Matthew Sturgis is the author of Oscar: A Life - hailed as 'simply the best modern biography of Wilde. He has also written acclaimed lives of Aubrey Beardsley and Walter Sickert, as well as Passionate Attitudes - a history of the English Decadence of the fin-de-siècle. He has been described - by A.N. Wilson in the TLS - as 'the greatest chronicle of the 1890s we have ever had.'
