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ISBN:0241123925
Richard Ellmann English
Author: Richard Ellmann
ISBN13: 978-0241123928
Title: Oscar Wilde
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ePUB size: 1886 kb
FB2 size: 1553 kb
DJVU size: 1484 kb
Language: English
Publisher: H. Hamilton; First edition (1987)
Pages: 632

Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellmann



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Praise for oscar wilde. Ellmann is our foremost literary biographer. Wilde’s life was a work of art, and so is this biography. Stephen Becker, Chicago Sun-Times. Richard Locke, Wall Street Journal. The best book of this or many a yea. ilde is brought unforgettably to life with his curious courage, his longing for self-destruction, his vulnerability and his irresistible charm.

Richard Ellmann wields his pen with alacrity, grace, and an intense sympathy for his subject that may leave you in This book is a haunting and beautiful biography of the don of the Aesthetic Movement. It traces his life from his early days as the son of a prominent physician father and an eccentric socialite mother (Sperenza) to his competition with Bram Stoker for the hand of Frances Balcombe, to his early homosexual experiments and final death amod disgrace and anonymity in the exile of France. Richard Ellman won the Pulitzer for his work on Oscar Wilde, and with good reason: it's not only the definitive look at the Irish poet, playwright, critic, and martyr, but it's also a ripping good read. Wilde was a movie star in a time before movies, a tabloid staple, and a constant bestseller, and Ellmann makes him - and his work - come alive.

Richard Ellmann, during a long and distinguished career, won international recognition as a scholar, teacher of English literature, critic, and biographer. His magesterial life of James Joyce has been widely acclaimed as the greatest literary biography of the century. Ellmann was born in Highland Park, Michigan, in 1918. He studied at Yale and at Trinity College in Dublin. His James Joyce (National Book Award, 1959) was preceded by Yeats: The Man and the Masks and The Identity of Yeats, and was followed by-among other greatly praised books-two volumes of Joyce letters, Eminent Domain, and Four Dubliners.

Richard Ellmann capped an illustrious career in biography (his James Joyce is considered one of the masterpieces of the 20th century) with this life of Oscar Wilde, which won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and Pulitzer Prize on its original publication in 1988  . I would describe Ellmann's prose as more workmanlike than entertaining, but that's perfectly OK, because Oscar's life was so amazing that any biographer's vanity would only get in the way. If you have any humanity at all, you'll finish this book having fallen in love with Oscar and identifying with him.

Book's title: Oscar Wilde Richard Ellmann. Library of Congress Control Number: 88040040. System Control Number: (Sirsi) 9035975. 809 B 19. Personal Name: Ellmann, Richard, 1918-. Publication, Distribution, et. New York. Vintage Books, (c)1988, c1987. Physical Description: xvii, 680 . p. of plates : ill. ;, 21 cm. General Note

Richard David Ellmann (March 15, 1918 – May 13, 1987) was an American literary critic and biographer of the Irish writers James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and William Butler Yeats. National Book Award for Nonfiction for James Joyce (1959), which is one of the most acclaimed literary biographies of the 20th century.

Winner of both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize, Oscar Wilde is the definitive biography of the tortured poet and playwright and the last book by renowned biographer and literary critic Richard Ellmann. Ellman captures the wit, creativity, and charm of the psychologically and sexually complicated writer, as well as the darker aspects of his personality and life

The listed Ellmann, Richard, ed. Oscar Wilde: A Collection of Critical Essays. Additions and Corrections to Richard Ellmann's Oscar Wilde.

Read "Oscar Wilde" by Richard Ellmann with Rakuten Kobo  . Winner of both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize, Oscar Wilde is the definitive biography of the tortured poet and playwright and the last book by renowned biographer and literary critic Richard Ellmann. Ellman captures the wit, creativity, and charm of the psychologically and sexually complicated writer, as well as the darker aspects of his personality and life.

Winner 1989 - Pulitzer Prize Winner 1988 - National Book Critics Circle Awards. The biography sensitive to the tragic pattern of the story of a great subject: Oscar Wilde - psychologically and sexually complicated, enormously quotable, central to a alluring cultural world and someone whose life assumed an unbearably dramatic shape. Ellmann's sympathetic retelling of Wilde's story, in steadier focus than we've heard it before, is more convincing than his hyperbolic literary judgments.

In this long-awaited bioraphy, Wilde the legendary Victorian - brilliant writer and conversationalist, reckless flouter of social and sexual conventions - is brought to life. More astute and forbearing, yet more fallible than legend has allowed, Wilde is given here the dimensions of a modern hero. Based on fresh material from many hitherto-untapped sources, Ellmann depicts Wilde's comet-like ascent on the Victorian scene and his equally dramatic sudden eclipse. His Irish background, the actresses to whom he paid court, his unfortunate wife and lovers, his clothes, coiffures, and the decor of his rooms - all are presented here in vivid detail. The saga of his 1882 American tour is recounted with a wealth of new details; also his later impact on the bastions of the French literary establishment. The London of the Nineties, of Whistler and the Pre-Raphaelites, Lillie Langtry and the Prince of Wales, is evoked alongside Paris of the "belle epoque" and the Greece, Italy and North Africa of Wilde's travels. Ellmann's definitive critical account of Wilde's entire oeuvre shows him as the proponent of a radical new aesthetic who was perilously at odds with Victorian society. After his period of success and daring, the fatal love affair with Lord Alfred Douglas is followed by exposure, imprisonment, a few wretched years abroad and death in exile. The tragic end of Wilde's life leaves the reader with a sense of compassion and grief for the protagonist. This edition make the popular and best selling biography available in paperback for the first time.
Reviews: 7
Puchock
This book will tear your heart. The infamy of his prosecution, and persecution, is beyond words. He never savaged his detractors as they did him, primarily the execrable egotist, the tiny little man named Whistler but also Swinburne, so cowardly yet such an unforgettable poet. But at least Swinburne had an excuse since he was psychologically damaged.

How many benefitted from his help or encouragement in his glory days, yet figuratively spat at him when a maniac (the Marquess of Queensberry) pursued him to his destruction.

His magnificent Biblical drama Salome and the poems inspired by his prison stay will not be forgotten. Nor will Dorian Grey, the ultimate in the tracing of a descent into unspeakable depths.

And somewhere down there in those depths can be discerned the ridiculous yet hideous spirit of Alfred Douglas, a man whose existence was totally pointless.

Among the numberless acquaintances of this tragic figure I must pay tribute to Nellie Melba, rarely described as warm-hearted, but it was she who emptied her purse for him on a Paris street when, threadbare and penniless, he was forced to ask for money.

That powerfully descriptive phrase "emptied her purse" is straight from the book, just one of many memorable phrases that make the history live for the reader.

I believe there never was and never will be a superior biography of Oscar Wilde.
Eseve
A real door-stop at 600 pages of 7-point type, but you'll want to read every word of it. It's a triumph of loving research. I would describe Ellmann's prose as more workmanlike than entertaining, but that's perfectly OK, because Oscar's life was so amazing that any biographer's vanity would only get in the way. If you have any humanity at all, you'll finish this book having fallen in love with Oscar and identifying with him. You will hate his persecutors, tormenters, and deserters, and especially you will loathe the rot and ugliness of class. You will finally feel drained, crushed, and utterly devastated. But you will come away wiser and strangely more sympathetic and loving toward all humans, as Oscar was, not because they are lovable, but because you happen to be one.
Mavegar
Enjoyed this bio. Have always wanted to read about him in more detail. This certainly goes into detail about every aspect of his life. It was well written and kept my interest. Oxford at that time was certainly different! Lots of quotes and poems and interesting facts about artists and academics. The writing was so small I almost needed stronger glasses - this is my only criticism but I should have checked first!
Nuliax
This is an amazing and exhaustive work about Oscar Wilde's life and is highly recommended by one Wilde's biggest fans, Mr. Stephen Fry. The book does not disappoint.
Burking
Books are like very personal items; either you're interested in the subject matter or you're not but somebody else is. Open the cover and take your chances.
Enditaling
Ellmann's portrait of Wilde--the Irish scholar, poet, playwright, wit, aesthete, and "posing sodomite"--is a masterpiece. It won two awards upon its original publication in 1988, the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics' Circle Award. At 589 pages of text in the paperback edition (not including notes, bibliography, two appendices, and the index), this will stand as perhaps the most definitive biography of a quite colorful man who had the unhappy talent of taking like a moth to the flames of his Victorian era. He could chat up a room, dress to the nines, act camp, and deal in rough-trade dalliances with homosexual prostitutes when "gross indecency," homosexual acts not amounting to sodomy, were still considered a crime. Indeed, he was imprisoned for two years of hard labor (1895-97) when the father of his longtime but faithless lover decided to make a scapegoat of him. Today we might view him more as an Elton John or Brian Epstein, a successful man now able to enjoy society's gains in tolerance.

Wilde's literary output was not vast, when compared to that of some others. As he himself boasted, "I put my genius into my life, and only my talent into my works." Yet he is well remembered for his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his play The Importance of Being Earnest, and his 50,000-word De Profundis (the last of these a long letter of recrimination to his fickle lover, Lord Alfred Douglas). Wilde married Constance Lloyd in 1881 and had two sons with her, but he could not fairly be described as a family man and he ended his life apart from them. After he was released from prison he quickly left England for the continent, never to return, wandering the streets of Paris alone and spending what little money he had on alcohol. He died in 1900 at the age of 46, from spinal meningitis of uncertain etiology. Ellmann claims it was syphilitic in nature, but it also might have stemmed from an injury in jail that burst his right ear drum. After a nine-year burial elsewhere, Wilde's remains were transferred to the Père Lachaise Cemetery inside the Parisian city limits. This book contains many fine pictures of his life, including that of his tomb--adorned by a modernist angel whose male genitalia were vandalized, only to be replaced eventually by a silver prosthesis. Even more than a century after his death, Wilde still excites controversy.
Quashant
God save Ellman. He knows more than anyone about Irish writers, and I love his writing style. I also recommend, so strongly, his bio of Joyce.
The standard on Oscar's life. So detailed it can be hard to read.....
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