The Fall of the House of Wilde: Oscar Wilde and His Family

History

Emer O'Sullivan

Europe

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Oscar Wilde owed his most outstanding characteristics - his precocious intellectualism, his flamboyance, his hedonism, his recklessness, his pride, his sense of superiority, his liberal sexual values - to his parents. Oscar's mother, Lady Jane Wilde, rose to prominence as a political journalist, advocating in 1848 a rebellion against colonialism. Proud, involved and challenging, she became a salon hostess and opened the Wildes' Dublin home at No. 1 Merrion Square to the public. Known as the most scintillating and stirring hostess of her day, she passed on her infectious delight in the art of living to Oscar, who imbibed it greedily. His father was Sir William Wilde, one of the most eminent men of his generation. Acutely conscious of injustices in the social order, Sir William laid the foundations for the Celtic renaissance in the belief that culture would establish a common ground between the privileged and the poor, Protestant and Catholic. But Sir William was also a philanderer, and when he stood accused of sexually assaulting a young female patient, the scandal and trial sent shock waves through Dublin society. After his father's death, the Wildes moved to London, where Oscar burst irrepressibly upon the scene. The one role that didn't suit him was that of the Victorian husband, as his wife, Constance, was to discover. For beneath the swelling forehead was a self-destructive itch: a lifelong devourer of attention, Oscar was unable to recognise when the party was over. The Fall of the House of Wilde for the first time places Oscar Wilde as a member of one of the most dazzling Anglo-Irish families of Victorian times and in the broader social, political and religious context. A remarkable and perceptive account, this is a major repositioning of our first modern celebrity, a man whose own fall from grace in a trial as public as his father's marked the end of fin de siècle decadence.

Fall of the House of Wilde, The

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

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Switch - Wer Ist Hier Wer? (German Edition)

Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH

<p>Children's Literature emerged as one of the most dynamic areas of scholarship at the start of the new millennium. This volume brings together established figures and challenging new voices in the field, providing a clear sense of the range and diversity of research taking place in this complex and evolving area around the globe. Based on selected proceedings and plenaries from the 16th biennial congress of the International Research Society in Kristiansand in 2003 "Telling a World - Shaping a World", this volume presents articles that reflect both the truly international scope and the orientations of contemporary research on children's litterature. Authors: Marina Warner, Boel Westin, Margarita Slavova, Anna Karlskov Skyggebjerg, Lindsay Myers, Mary Shine Thompson, Aasfrid Svensen, Chie Mizuma, Victoria Flanagan, Sharyn Pearce, Valerie Coghlan, Jana Pohl, Carole Carpenter, Margot Hillel, Thomas van der Walt, Mavis Reiner, Clare Bradford, Mieke K. T. Desmet, Martina Seifert, Beverley Naidoo, Hans-Heino Ewers, Elise Seip Tønnessen, Elwyn Jenkins</p>

Children's Litterature Global and Local. Social and Aesthetic Perspectives

Novus Press

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Books by Emer O'Sullivan