Oscar Wilde Books

Updated version of the "Picture of Dorian Gray". It's very well written (Reed is an excellent author), moves quickly, isn't TOO gruesome and has an interesting supporting cast of characters. Also brings up issues of morality and life in very interesting terms. I personally like it better than Oscar Wilde's original! Recommended

I approached Rick Reed's "A Face Without a Heart" prepared to be a little disappointed. All too often even the best writers fall short when they try to update classic stories. Happily, "A Face Without a Heart" turned out to be an exception.

I read "The Picture of Dorian Gray", several times over many years. When I first read it, I think I was around 13 and really had no idea what kind of debauchery he was getting into. Of course each succeeding time I read it, Dorian's wickedness was clearer. It's always been a favorite of mine (the story, not the wickedness).

Reed achieves a delicate balancing act of being true to Wilde's tale while putting a patina of his own vision over it--enhancing but never obscuring the original. His anti-hero is Gary Adrion, an anagram of Dorian Gray, and the cynical Lord Harry Wotten (who was actually my favorite character in Wilde's book) is transformed into a cynical black drag queen named Lady Henrietta Wotten. Decadent London of the 1890's becomes decadent Chicago of 2006+. The most inventive device in the book is that of making the painting of Dorian Gray a living, changeable hologram of Gary Adrion. When Gary sees the hideous, deformed and evil hologram at the end it is even more shocking than when Dorian saw the painting.

If there were a rating of 4-1/2 stars I would have given this book that rating only because the story itself is a re-telling, not original. But I thought it deserved better than a 4, and so I gave it a 5. I've read other stories by Reed and he's definitely a 5-star writer!

"A Face Without a Heart" is short (only 211 pages) and a quick, riveting read. If you like horror stories that also manage to convey a morality tale and clever dialogue, you will love this one. Look for other works by this very talented author! You won't be disappointed.

Ruth Sims, author of The Phoenix

Rick R. Reed's A FACE WITOUT A HEART brings THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY into present day Chicago.

The hedonistic pleasures of Gary Adrion leave a trail of shocking changes to the vibrant perfect image of his youth preserved (or should have been) in a holographic sculpture. The people around Adrion seem to suffer the most from his actions, but as time wreaks doom on the holographic image, Gary is haunted by the changes. The reader is also haunted by the comparison of a beautiful man and the ugly soul that lives in the hologram.

Beautifully written by Mr. Reed, the language, details, and rhythm of the novel kept me turning the pages until the end. I highly recommend this engaging novel.

A Face Without a Heart is Rick R. Reed's masterful retelling of Oscar Wilde's horror classic, The Portrait of Dorian Gray. In millennial Chicago, beautiful Gary Adrion flippantly offers to swap his soul for enternal youth, and soon realizes that the bargain has been sealed.

As he descends into his own private hell of debauchery, Adrion's youth and beauty remain untouched, while the holographic portrait hidden in his basement shows the ravages of his excesses instead.

Reed has captured masterfully the dark underbelly of Chicago's hedonistic night-world: the parties, drugs, orgies and unbridled sex. As time passes, there is nothing to which Adrion, free of both conscience and consequence, will not stoop, including, ultimately, murder.

With impeccable pacing and ghoulish detail, Reed leads the reader by the hand to the grisly denouement.

A page turner, but not for the squeamish of the faint hearted. Here there be nightmares indeed. Victor J. Banis, author of Tales From C.A.M.P., JACKIE'S BACK

This novel's subtitle, "A Modern-day Version of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray" says it all. In Reed's version, Dorian Gray is Gary Adrion and artist Basil Howard is Liam Howard. Lord Henry Wotton, the Oscar Wilde analog from Dorian Gray, becomes drag queen Lady Henrietta Wotton. Here, Gary's visage is recreated holographically, resulting in an image so exquisite that he jokingly offers his soul in return for a promise to look like that forever. Of course Gary gets his wish, and soon after the hologram begins to display the ravages of his excessive lifestyle while he remains physically unscathed.

Like Gray, Adrion finds and loses love, but the object of his affection is an exotic dancer rather than an actress. Gary's unjustified rejection of the dancer launches him into a life of reckless depravity, one filled with meaningless sex, copious drug use, and even murder. The utter emptiness of his lifestyle eats at the fabric of his soul, causing him to loathe his existence, and eventually, to destroy the source of his eternal youth.

Reed does himself, and his excellent source material proud, masterfully juggling multiple viewpoint characters for maximum effect. Each has a distinctive voice, providing a different, but illuminating perspective on the events described. Like Wilde's story, Reed's is a commentary on contemporary life, a mirror held up to catch the images cast by the dark side of modern existence. Like the best books, Reed's goes beyond its narrow subject matter to invite reflection on deeper patterns of human behavior, in this instance, the self-destructive impulses we all must grapple with and master if we wish to stay sane. As such, it constitutes a penetrating morality tale, a journey into the very heart of darkness.

Oscar Wilde was a handsome man in 1892, as the photo of him in this books clearly indicates. He was a brilliant playwright and daubled in poetry. However, as the drawing of his arrest at the Cadogan Hotel on April 13, 1895, he was an arrogant, dandified "gentleman." He had been accused of a horrible charge and should have accepted his fate. To crave justice from libel, he laid himself and his reputation open to scrutiny and disaster.
Why his grandson would want all of this sordidness known now is impossible to comprehend. Some things are better left forgotten or not said. Wilde felt that the charge (however right it might be) called for a defense of justification. It turned out to be the opposite as the self-destructive genius only continued to lie with charm, entertaining the audience but not the court.

Those who start libel actions often emerge with their reputations and lives in tatters. Libel actions are meant to be cases for re-establishing reputations, confounding gossip and allowing the litigant to emerge in a state of unblemished purity (John Mortimer). The most famous libel case of all led Oscar Wilde directly to jail. He left behind a devoted wife and two sons. The grandson who released this detailed account of the trial to try to figure out "Why on earth did you do it?"

There are photographs of some of the persons involved and of the evidence used against him. It is proposed that perhaps he really didn't think he had done anything wrong. After all, many important people of that time got away with the same thing of which he was accussed. To learn what it is, you must read this book.

I'd heard rumors about his sexual persuasion previously, but this stuff went a little too far to please my sensibilities. The Judge maintained that men who could do as he did were 'dead to all sense of shame' and declared that this offence was 'the worst I have ever tried.'

Poor Oscar, his ego got in the way; his pride was too great to accept the fact that he had been 'found out.' In going to court, he laid open his past and destroyed his future. He hurt not only himself but his family as well. Why can't people just let the sordid past lay dormant?

What's amazing is that, we have heard for many years about the unparalleled wit and charm of Wilde in conversation, yet until now we of course have been denied this experience. Reading these verbatim transcripts, hundreds of pages long and recently unearthed, we are given the opportunity to do this almost virtually, for the Wildean voice comes through loud and clear, with perfect crispness and distinction. This libel trial, the first of three of the Oscar Wilde trials, is almost a conversation between two persons, and the defence counsel, Carson, though incredibly scornful and insolent, is almost as intelligent and quite as good at debate as Wilde, so it's a splendid match of brains. The outcome is disheartening, though, and throughout you can't help pounding the desk and murmuring out loud, oh, Oscar, how could you have been so stupid! Or -- don't go there! So he becomes real in a way he hasn't previously, not even in the best biographies available. Queensberry and Alfred Douglas come off, in hindsight, as monsters of privilege in only quasi-human form. And poor Edward Shelley, it is plain, deserves a book of his own.

This is a wonderful book if you are only interested in reading the actual transcript from Oscar's trial. Indeed, the book is excellent in that respect. However, I would say it is a book to avoid if you are a fan of Lord Alfred Douglas. It seems to me that this book, like so many before it, is trying to make Alfred Douglas the scapegoat. There was a reason Bosie wanted Oscar to take his father to trial, they WOULD have won. It was a carefully laid out plan and Oscar, not Bosie, is the one who went astray from it. Lord Alfred was to take the witness box and testify against his father. When he was finished telling all that his father had done, what sort of man he was, they felt sure no jury would side with him. However, just before Bosie was about to take the witness box, Oscar refused to allow him. He knew what it would mean by his refusing to allow Bosie to take the stand, he understood very well what it would mean, but he said Bosie should never have to do such a thing. Lord Alfred himself spent a great deal of time lamenting Oscar's decision, and wondering why on earth he changed his mind. He seems to think that Oscar had been talking to Robert Ross and he and Ross had come up with another plan. Ross however, is a compulsive liar, and was probably the worst person Oscar could have trusted.

Oscar's sons, and his grandsons, lived with a false impression of Robert Ross, and therefore with a false impression of Lord Alfred Douglas. I am sickened that these misconceptions live on even now, so long after their deaths. I am sick of Lord Alfred being made out to be a monster, some evil, wicked boy who destroyed Oscar Wilde. Oscar was a very intelligent man, was he not? Don't you think he knew what he was doing? "I must say to myself that I ruined myself and that no man great or small can be ruined but by his own hand."-Oscar Wilde. I'm just tired of the blame being shoveled solely onto Lord Alfred. He wasn't a monster, and I wish people would stop trying to portray him as if he was one.

It wasn't a capital trial, but the 1895 libel proceedings of Oscar Wilde against the Marquess of Queensberry were in their way tragic and terrible. Entering the trial, Wilde was a celebrity and a playwright with the magnificently silly _The Importance of Being Ernest_ in successful performance in London and New York. Afterwards, he was pursued, tried, convicted, and imprisoned at hard labor for the then crime of homosexuality. It is a story that has been told many times and turned into dramas. Those of us who love Wilde's writing and outrageous wit will always wonder what would have happened if he had been able to write and live as he wished, instead of being ruined and sent to an early death. Amazingly, the trial record has until now been unavailable. There were summaries, and publication of extracts, but only with _The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde: The First Uncensored Transcript of the Trial of Oscar Wilde vs. John Douglas (Marquess of Queensberry)_, 1895 (Fourth Estate) do we have a full record. In 2000, an anonymous source donated a transcript of the trial to the British Library. It was authenticated, and has now been edited by Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson. Anyone interested in Wilde's life and writing will be fascinated by this verbatim record which puts judge, prosecutor, defender, and of course Wilde himself on the stage of the Old Bailey to play out their roles verbatim.

Holland has a useful introduction to recall the details of how Wilde was snared into legal doom, spurred by his young man Lord Alfred Douglas ("Bosie") to bother Bosie's abominable father Queensberry. When, after several skirmishes, Queensberry left his calling card at Wilde's club, with the words "To Oscar Wilde posing as somdomite" (spelling was one of the Marquess's shortcomings), Wilde should have thrown it into the fire. Instead, egged on by Bosie, he took Queensberry to court for libel. It was the mistake of his life.; as Holland writes, "If I could ask my grandfather a single question, it would have to be, 'Why on earth did you do it?'" Wilde did not take advice that he leave the country, and so sealed his own doom. Most of the pages of this book are the words from the trial, and most of those words come from the bouts with Wilde in the witness box. Initially he seemed to enjoy his role in the events, and gave as good as he got. For much of the repartee reported here, the transcriber notes: "(_laughter_.)" and "(_more laughter_.)" But an eventual flippant answer overthrew Wilde on the stand, although his case could not have been won. When Carson asked about a companion, "Did you ever kiss him?" Wilde replied, "Oh, no, never in my life; he was a peculiarly plain boy." It was not long after that Wilde and his lawyers withdrew the charges, and Queensberry was declared not guilty.

If Queensbury was not guilty of libel, it was reasonable to think that his accusations were truthful, and with the evidence already gathered, Queensberry assisted in a speedy arrest of Wilde, who once again had refused advice that he leave the country. The subsequent trials, one with a hung jury and one finding him guilty of gross indecency, are not covered in this volume. Wilde had two years of hard labor, and three sad years of exile before his death in Paris in 1900. He produced the mordant "Ballad of Reading Gaol" but little else during these years, and while there are plenty of examples that his wit remained in conversation, we were robbed of subsequent examples of the delicious laughter that had come from each of his successively improving plays. This is a useful book as full documentation of the first trial, and Holland has given helpful notes throughout. Those who admire Wilde, however, will find it more than useful. Wilde was brilliant at Greek and admired Greek drama and life, and it is no exaggeration that the transcript of the trial, reading as it does like a piece of period theater, has all the marks of a classic tragedy.

As this book makes abundantly clear, Alfred Douglas is to blame. Al wanted to get back at his unstable and angry father through Wilde. Alfred forced his lap dog Wilde to ignore everyone else's advice and pursue a criminal charge against his father the Marquess of Queensbury.

THe MArquess at that time had come through a vicious divorce trial, and suffered the suicide of an older son who was being blackmailed for intimate relations over many years with the new Prime Minister. The Marquess reacted unwisely in forbidding any friendship between Al and Oscar, and in moving not only to throw vegetables upon the stage on the opening night of The Importance, but also leaving a slanderous if somewhat illegible card at Oscar's club.

Oscar lived to regret that owing to his extravagance in setting up Al and Al's intimate pal in an expensive hotel, he could not pay the hotel bill and thus leave for a planned trip to Paris to practice Salome. Instead he remained in London and received the unfortunate card. His most trusted legal friend had already been retained by the Marquess and thus could not give Oscar the good advice he needed to ignore the card and discard it. Instead he followed Al's insistence in charging Al's father the Marquess, and the rest in the tight knit British aristocracy and ruling class, as flamboyantly revealed in Oscar's plays, was inexorable and inevitable. IN fact Oscar's trials become his finest performance and most indeniable proof of the utter and unmentionable corruption, vice, immorality and hypocrisy of the BRitish ruling class. But what a profound and absolute price he paid for revealing this.

This nevertheless was his life's mission. The son of Irish Catholic nationailsts, he was raised in Protestant Schools, including Trinity in Dublin where he was classmate to the one who would so cruelly cross-examine as recorded here. He then went on to Oxford, and London, serving subversively and amazing his fake friends. He perhaps believed he could dazzle the British courts but was quickly silenced, and the events must speak clearly for themselves. As for the British system of injustice, as BRitish Barrister and author of the Rumpole series John Mortimer displays in his brilliant foreword to this book, res ipse loquitur. Mortimer concludes: " . . .when any merciful prosecutor or Home Secretary might have decied that he had suffered enough, it let him down badly and he was finally convicted. Passing the ridiculous sentence of two years' hard labour, Mr. Justice WIlls said that men who could do as Oscar WIlde did were 'dead to all sense of shame.' This judge, who had presided over cases of rape and murder, seriously maintained that Wilde's offense was 'the worst I have ever tried.' When the verdict and sentence were announced ( . . .) the truth had been exposed but it was still a shameful day for British Justice (p. xiii)."

Needless to say that prosecutor who had so viciously treated Wilde despite their co-nationality went on to a highly successful legal career. Reading these transcripts reveal how gifted a barrister he was and how very poorly served was Mr. Wilde in this absolute diversion of the interests of justice, in which Wilde could bring a libel case against a member of the British aristocracy and wind up in prison himself, doing hard labour and losing everythnig he had including his beloved wife and sons.

This nevertheless stands as Mr. Wilde's greatest revelation of British corruption, which Anglo America now eagerly imitates, and thus which we must now read as a cautionary tale with great attention.

And we must deeply thank and congratulate Wilde's grandson in researching in a keenly academic manner this book from forgotten and hidden court documents and associated texts, and in writing the brilliant introduction and notes, a scholarly feat which he humbly denies and ascribes to others in his very generous acknowledgements.

Please note the Bitish edition of this book irrelevantly includes in the title Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess; do not buy needlessly twice unless a fervent collector of all things Wilde, which is emminently understandable and as matter of course forgiveable. Nevertheless, in light of Mr. Wilde's Irish nationalist parentage, and his central image in Salome, and in citing his own description of the Marquess of Queensberry this superfluous title makes itself sweet icing upon a bitter cake.

P. Craig Russell is one of the most literate comic artists now active. He is best known for his opera adaptations, but he goes after a different kind of story here.

These start as fairy tales in the classic mold, with giants, ice fairies, enchantments, and royalty lost and found. Even though Wilde wrote them, they're tame enough for kids and carry moral lessons I wouldn't mind a kid seeing. Wilde made sure there's plenty for the adults to hold onto, including a surprisingly religious turn in "The Selfish Giant." To tell the truth, I haven't read Wilde's original stories. This book is good encouragement to do so.

Russell's gentle artwork brings these stories to life. He has a unique way with fantasy elements, vividly seen in the Giant's perpetual winter. He also has a fine sense of how much cartooniness to allow - just enough for the story, but not enough to Disneyfy Wilde's text.

I consider these kid-safe, but "Star child" has a few harsh turns that may not suit the delicate - read the story first, yourself, then decide whether it suits your family. Or just get it for yourself, as I did.

//wiredweird

The Selfish Giant is without a doubt the most touching, deeply moving, powerful, uplifting, but sad, children's story I have ever read. I recommend this book to all adults, students, and children who haven't cried for a while, or need a great, quick, life-changing read.

I have a vivid memory of a film strip adaptation of "The Selfish Giant" that I saw several times in kindergarten and first grade. I didn't really understand the Christian allegory at the time, but I was entranced by the beautiful, melancholy nature of the story. Years later I still find it deeply moving, and P. Craig Russell's adaptation is as perfect a retelling as I can imagine. Though a non-Christian, I find that the story loses none of its impact or beauty. This is a story for anyone with an open mind and a love of well-told children's tales. Russell is one of the modern masters of cartooning, and his artwork and sense of design really compliment the story. His second collection of Wilde's fairy tales is also highly recommended, as are his adaptations of various operas and the fantasy stories of Michael Moorcock.

I'd like to give it a score of "-5" but 1 is the lowest available here. This is absolutely and positively the ugliest artistic rendition of Oscar Wilde's beautiful fairy tales and of that of thousands of children's books I have read or collected over many years. The comic book style illustrations draw the reader away from the inner poetry and beauty of Wilde's prose. This is truly the first book I have ever thought of burning - it would make good kindling for the fireplace.

This is simply the best book on Oscar Wilde that I've ever read. A must read for Wilde scholars and an enjoyable read for Wilde enthusiasts.

This psychoanalytic biography of Wilde explores more aspects of his life than many of the better known biographies, even Ellmann's. Well-researched, well-written, fun to read. Wilde's isolation, complicated relationship to his young sister who died and his parents, and terror of syphilis, are all explored in this interesting and enjoyable book

It is remarkable that this sensationalistic and inaccuate text has gained the respect and attention that it has amassed both among the scholarly and popular press alike. Knox's "research" is pure Freudian fantasy, and her thesis reliant upon hyperbole and a serious misreading of Wilde's work and more importantly (for the sake of her argument), his family dynamics. The success of this book is puzzling to me as a Wilde scholar; there are enough factual inaccuracies and flights of rhetorical fancy here to lead me to conclude that the educated, late-20th century reader, like his Victorian counterpart, loves a good scandal enough to ignore both logic and whatever overwhelming evidence may prove to the contrary. Scholarship this certainly is not; I recommend those curious about Wilde's life and work attend to Ellmann, Freedman and other scholarly Wilde critics and biographers for more factual and less trendy fare. As a Ph. D. candidate in Victorian Literature and long-time Wildean scholar, I was surprised and disappointed with both Knox's premise and her text.

I'm a graduate student studying Wilde, and really appreciated this thoughtful and challenging book. So much of the scholarship on the most interesting issues--gender, sexuality, identity--is original only in its jargonistic neologisms. This book is different: straightforward, solidly researched, beautifully written, and sympathetic to Wilde.

"Teleny" has long been an outlawed book and in many senses still is. The fact that it is only published by the occasional gay press is symptomatic, and only its presumed author has rescued this book from oblivion I fear. Its subject matter obviously excludes the book from the mainstream of literature, though in my opinion it is well worth reading for any open-minded lover of literature (as the unusual heterosexual female reading this book I think I can afford to say this). "Teleny" is a bizarre and confused book (due to its diverse authors) but never quite lets go of the storyline. The Victorian coyness of the many euphemisms used is quite touching in so explicit a book, and as a story "Teleny" is quite charming and tragic. The style may not be consistent, it is never banal and often witty (how otherwise could anyone even think it was Wilde's?). It is definitely the sort of book that if you start reading it -unless you're a prude- you'll finish. However, if you want to read this book because you think it is Wilde's, and you like his work, you'll find it is never quite up to his standards. If on the other hand you like Wilde and think he was fascinating, read this book: whoever wrote it gives an interesting outlook on the darker side of that famous life. If you love Wilde and are gay, well, read this, you won't have had so much fun reading a literary pornographic novel for a long time.

Spoilers follow...

Before you read this book, consider what you want to get out of it...

Gay erotica? Only if you can happily read through the first half where all the sex is heterosexual.

Mixed gay/het erotica? Perhaps a good choice. However, a lot of the sex is gross. I mean sickening, not kinky. Ex: diseased prostitutes, dispassionate sex without mutual attraction, a ghastly injury, etc. There are two (het) rape scenes, both very grim. Even fans of rape erotica may not enjoy these scenes.

A good story? I didn't like any of the characters, especially the narcissistic narrator. Love is at first sight--aka for no obvious reason. The first half of the book (70 pages) is the narrator whining about his unwanted attraction for another man. The plot doesn't develop until the second half.

Historical picture of an era? Yes. Read this if you like books that paint vivid pictures. The era and people are captured nicely. Descriptions are rich without being overlong. Love gushes with flowerly prose. Everything gross is described so well you share the nausea with the narrator.

A great classic novel? Maybe. I hope this wasn't Wilde, because I like him better than this book, which is more gloomy than clever.

Note: The book has a lot of French phrases. With 2+ years of high-school French I was able to understand about half of them. You can follow the story without the French, if you have to.

Teleny is undoubtably the finest example of an erotic novel that I have ever had the pleasure of reading. It flows smoothly and easily throughout the plot without becoming redundant or boring. The passion and conflicting emotions portrayed in these men are both riveting and timeless. I particularly enjoyed the subtle way in which sex and death, the two great constants, were so skillfully entertwined. The permanence of death serves to highlight the immediacy of our need to live life to the fullest extent. This is not a creampuff romance. It is a story of a passionate driving need to reach out and touch another human soul.

For anyone who has slogged through the artificial and self-conscious world of Victorian 'erotica', Teleny will seem both familiar and surprising. Written around 1893 by several anonymous writers of uneven ability, the novel claims our attention for two reasons. While the possibility that one of its writers was Oscar Wilde, an idea that grows more intriguing as one reads on, will probably remain its primary draw, it is also one of the first books to transcend its pornographic trappings and explore the emotional life of its protagonist. This progressive point of view, and the appropriately unaffected prose used to tell the tale, validate Teleny's position as the fountainhead of the modern approach to gender and sexuality in literature. Editor John McRae has succinctly summed up the circumstantial evidence of Oscar Wilde's authorship in his scholarly introduction to the only complete reprinting of the original text. This is not a case where the cheap edition just substitutes pulpier paper--for half the price you get half the book. Nor is Teleny for the weak stomach or the faint of heart. On the way to plumbing the depths of our human origins in our animal bodies, the book describes some extreme behavior. Readers who are offended by graphic descriptions of body parts and vividly imagined sex acts should look elsewhere. ON the other hand, those who would enjoy erotica more if it paid more attention to the sensuous and subjective experience may find something to celebrate.

This great story could be called a psychological thriller, a horror story, or a morality play. Maybe even science fiction. It is a superb tale of the corruption within each of us. Wilde convinces the reader that Vanity is a part of every human life. The ultimate vanity is to deny this.

Very enjoyable story from a witty author.

great book hard to read because print was so small

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a fine piece of literature- a tale of excess, of corruption, of decay and of facades.
Basil Hallward, an artist, paints a picture of Dorian Gary, a handsome and vain young man, whom the artist is besotted with. Dorian Gray sells his soul for eternal youth, in a Faustian bargain, whereby all the age , decay corruption will show in the picture , while Grey's appearance will stay eternally young and fresh.

Encouraged by the hedonistic cynic Lord Henry Wotton, Gray embarks on a life of corruption, decadence and cruelty. Lord Henry is also the vehicle through which Wilde put down his many uniquely Wildesque epigrams into the novel, such as " Conscience and cowardice are really the same thing, Basil. Conscience is the trade name of the firm. That is all"; " Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love. It is the faithless who know love's tragedies"; "There is only one thing worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about" ; "The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it." ; " It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But it is better to be good than to be ugly." And " As for the virtuous poor , one can pity them of course , but one cannot possibly admire them".

The bargain made by Gray can only lead to eventual destruction , and the novel is a statement by Wilde on humanity and society , in the cavalier and irreverent way that only Wilde could.

Sir Robert Helpmann gave the performance of his career in Justin Fleming's classic play, The Cobra, in the Sydney Opera House, as the aged Lord Alfred Douglas, set during World War Two, as Bosie looked back on his doomed relationship with Oscar Wilde. Regarded as the definitive theatrical treatment of Wilde and Douglas, the play observed among other things that Wilde was the first Irishman to leave Ireland, go to England and become Greek.

H Montgomery Hyde absolves Douglas of ruining Wilde, even finding Douglas "kindly" to younger people. This is a portrait hard to reconcile with the same Douglas who threw fits of ungovernable rage to have his way, and told various well wishers to butt out when they advised Oscar to go to France. Even the magistrate post-dated the warrant for Wilde's arrest to give him time to leave the country. Being Irish, why did Douglas insist on maintaining an Englishman's right to remain in England? Also, was it not critical that Douglas' insistance that Wilde sue the Mad Marquess of Queensberry was based on pure revenge against his hateful father?

Hyde's book is excellent, notwithstanding, as it allows us to be the judge. It is finely accounted, well researched and has the merit of considered clarity. A good read. But it should be read alongside the classic play, The Cobra.

In 1983, Sir Robert Helpmann gave the performance of his career in Justin Fleming's magnificent play, The Cobra, in the Sydney Opera House, as the aged Lord Alfred Douglas, set during World War Two, as Bosie looked back on his doomed relationship with Oscar Wilde. Regarded as the definitive theatrical treatment of Wilde and Douglas, the play observed among other things that Wilde was the first Irishman to leave Ireland, go to England and become Greek.

H Montgomery Hyde absolves Douglas of ruining Wilde, even finding Douglas "kindly" to younger people. This is a portrait hard to reconcile with the same Douglas who threw fits of ungovernable rage to have his way, and told various well wishers to butt out when they advised Oscar to go to France. Even the magistrate post-dated the warrant for Wilde's arrest to give him time to leave the country. Being Irish, why did Douglas insist on maintaining an Englishman's right to remain in England? Also, was it not critical that Douglas' insistance that Wilde sue the Mad Marquess of Queensberry was based on pure revenge against his hateful father?

Hyde's book is excellent, notwithstanding, as it allows us to be the judge. It is finely accounted, well researched and has the merit of considered clarity. A good read. But it should be read alongside the classic play, The Cobra.

this is the kind of book that will be treasured down through the years.not an investment of money,but rather a feeling of well being

Basically, this collection of Oscar Wilde stories is a reasonably good collection of the man's fairytales, mixing a few old favourites with some new (or at least reasonably unknown) stories; some excellent, some strange, and some, well...not so good. P. J. Lynch is the illustrator, who in my opinion is a man who can do no wrong. Some of his best are not in fact the full page illustrations, but the small pictures at the beginning and end of each stories, beautifully simple and framed only by the white of the page.

"The Selfish Giant" is probably the most famous of all Wilde's children's stories, of the giant who forbade children to play in his beautiful garden, resulting in winter claiming it all year round. Only when he tears down his walls and permits the children to play does he find happiness, especially in the discovery of a particular little boy who one day comes to claim him for his own garden...

"The Nightingale and the Rose" is a beautiful, haunting poetic tale that doesn't really come across as a children's story in content and form. A small nightingale hears the sadness of a lovelorn student, whose beloved has promised to dance with him if he brings her a red rose. Since none are in the garden, the Nightingale sacrifices herself in order to present him with one, singing of love in the moonlight whilst pressing herself up against the barren rosetree's thorn. No where is Wilde's stunning prose more obvious than here, as the Nightingale sings: "Bitter, bitter was the pain, and wilder and wilder grew her song, for she sang of the Love that is perfected by Death,
of the Love that dies not in the tomb." Just beautiful, and Lynch's garden scenes are striking - especially that of the Nightingale pressing her breast up against the thorn.

"The Devoted Friend" is an odd story-within-a-story as a Linnet tells a grouchy Water-rat about the friendship between an honest man named little Hans and a wealthy Miller: a friendship that is decidedly one-sided. Again, it is not entirely a cheerful children's story, as it ends with Hans' death and the Water-rat's complete inability to understand the moral. Overly long, the moral will probably also be lost on most readers, as its a strange ending to say the least. Illustrations are mainly pastoral scenes, but unfortunately don't compensate enough for the dull narrative.

"The Happy Prince" is the other of Wilde's most popular stories, and my definite favourite. The golden statue of the prince in the town is baffled by the reality of poverty in his city, and so employs a swallow to prolong its flying south for the winter in order to pick his jewels and gold plating and take it to those in need. Poignant, tragic and beautiful, I read this story when I was a child and it's stayed with me ever since. Lynch's illustrations are the best here, with aerial scenes that are from (literally) bird's eye-view.

"The Remarkable Rocket" is not however, one of the most memorable...in fact its downright boring. At the Prince's wedding a box of rockets are let off, including one arrogant one that is completely wrapped up in its own importance. That's about it, and yet it stretches over 17 pages. No one will blame you if you skip this one, and even Lynch seems a bit confused at how to present this story, creating cartoonish-like fireworks that don't fit in with the rest of the book.

Finally, "The Young King" is also quite long (one sentence has 125 words in it!), but compensates by fascinating imagery and beautiful, mysterious language. No other story shows Wilde's Christianity than here, but it is saved from being to preachy and moralising by the very real sense of the higher powers at work upon the Prince who adores beauty above all things, but is given several dreams (both beautiful and disturbing) that show him how this beauty is acquired. Again Lynch works wonders with his precise water-colours, though be warned there are a few rather dated assumptions of ethnicity, including the words "Negroes" and "Moors" in a negative light.

With the rest of the mysticism and violence of other stories, and the sparseness of Lynch's illustrations such language further implies that the title "Stories for Children" is misleading - surely these words could have been changed for that suited audience. This is more of an anthology for adult collectors, but such people may want to look for a more complete version - only those who adore the work of P. J. Lynch may want to purchase this book. For children, only two are appropriate, the others are too long or too complex.

While Wilde was one of the greatest wits of our time, this book of epigrams is sorely lacking. His bits of conversation are fun to read, but quotations from his written works are taken out of context and lose much because of that. I recommend this for any Wildephile, but with reservations.

Formerly published under the title of 'The Epigrams of Oscar Wilde,' this compilation of quotes is one of my favorites. I turn to it again and again when looking for a choice bit of humor to accentuate a letter or conversation. There are bits and pieces from all of Oscar Wildes plays, non-fiction works, and even conversations. Topics are as diverse as Religion ("Religion is the fashionable substitute for Belief."--Dorian Gray) and Love ("...love and gluttony justify everything"-In Conversation) and Criticism ("...the first duty of an art critic is to hold his tongue at all times, and upon all subjects."-The English Renaissance of Art). Highly Recommended, and makes a great gift as well.

oscar wilde has a wonderful way with words. no-one, not even his harshest moral critics, can deny this. if you're looking for the pointed and witty epigrams that peppered The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, you're in the wrong place.

these fairy tales have soft edges, and are obviously apologues. each one deals with complicated moral dilemmas -- but provides no solutions; the reader is often left feeling frustrated by the lack of clear moral direction that other fairy tales tend to have in abundance.

written more for adults than children, this book is a delightful way to spend an afternoon... if you don't mind having to think.