Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions by Frank Harris

Consumers of biography are familiar with the division between memoirs of the living or recently dead written by those who “knew” the subject more or less intimately, and the more objective or scholarly accounts produced by later generations.In the case of Wilde, as presented to us by Frank Harris, we are in a way doubly estranged from the subject. We meet with Oscar the charismatic talker, whose tone of voice can never be reproduced – even if a more scrupulous biographer had set down his words accurately – and we are perhaps already aware of him as Wilde the self-destructive celebrity who uneasily fills the place of the premier gay icon and martyr in our contemporary view.Neither of these images will do. We need to read as many accounts as possible. Harris, though himself a self-advertising literary and sexual buccaneer, takes a wincingly representative view of Wilde’s homophile activity: for him it is a patrician excrescence, the abominable vice of the few, contracted at English board...

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Episodes

Saturday Dec 23, 2023

Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions by Frank Harris

Episodes

10 – X. The First Meeting with Lord Alfred Douglas

11 – XI. The Threatening Cloud Draws Nearer

12 – XII. Danger Signals: the Challenge

13 – XIII. Oscar Attacks Queensberry and is Worsted

14 – XIV. How Genius is Persecuted in England

15 – XV. The Queen vs. Wilde: The First Trial

16 – XVI. Escape Rejected: The Second Trial and Sentence

17 – XVII. Prison and the Effects of Punishment

18 – XVIII. Mitigation of Punishment; but not Release

19 – XIXa. His St. Martin’s Summer: His Best Work – Part One