Overview

This edition marks the centenary of Oscar Wilde's death, and is the most complete ever to appear. It contains over 1500 of his letters, and anyone unfamiliar with Wilde as a correspondent will find it packed with unexpected delights. This magnificent collection is a major publishing event. Of all nineteenth-century letter writers Oscar Wilde is, predictably, one of the most sparkling. Wonderfully fluent in style, the letters bear that most familiar of Wildean hallmarks - the lightest of touches for the most serious of subjects. He knew and corresponded with many leading political, literary and artistic figures of the time including William Gladstone, George Curzon, W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Frank Harris, Aubrey Beardsley and Max Beerbohm. Wilde's letters show him at his informal best. They comment openly on his life and his work from the early years of undergraduate friendship, through his year-long lecture tour in America as a striving and ambitious young `Professor of Aesthetics', to the short period of fame and success in the early 1890s followed by his disgrace and imprisonment. The last and most poignant section covers the five long years between his downfall and his early death in exile at forty-six. Even in adversity his humour does not desert him and he is able to share with his readers that greatest of gifts - the ability to smile at one's own misfortune.

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9781857027815

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Reviews

'The year's unputdownable joy.' Jonathan Keates, Spectator 'Almost like living his life with him! One puts down the letters heavy with mixed emotions -- admiration, sorrow and exasperation.' Peter Lewis, Daily Mail 'You get a wonderful sense, such as even the best biography couldn't quite give, of Wilde in action from day to day -- living in the thick of society, hustling his career forward. A monument to his great personality.' John Gross, Sunday Telegraph 'The long serpentine line of Oscar Wilde's career is traced here like some fiery scarlet thread. This is a marvellous volume, fully worthy of Wilde's own genius.' Peter Ackroyd, The Times 'These letters give us the human side of Wilde's legend and its human cost.' Philip Hoare, Observer 'A whole world is here. *****' Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday 'The most comprehensive collection yet of Wilde's correspondence, charting his development from ambitious young man about town to literary dandy and tortured outcast.' Guardian 'Oscar Wilde writes his own life in the newly revised and expanded Complete Letters. The one essential book on the subject.' The Independent Books of the Year 'The scholarship of Holland and Hart-Davis is as impeccable as their subject's wit, while the letters themselves bear comparison with any more conventional form of literary art. They are filled with the terror and the pity of Wilde's extravagant career, not untouched by pathos, and irradiated always by perpetual and wilful laughter.' Times Literary Supplement 'Meticulously edited, intelligently annotated, the letters were a biographer's dream.' Irish Times 'These 1,500 letters are always candid, always humorous (even in adversity) and add substantially to Wilde's reputation not only as a wit but as an intellectual heavyweight.' The Times Books of the Year

'The year's unputdownable joy.' Jonathan Keates, Spectator 'Almost like living his life with him! One puts down the letters heavy with mixed emotions -- admiration, sorrow and exasperation.' Peter Lewis, Daily Mail 'You get a wonderful sense, such as even the best biography couldn't quite give, of Wilde in action from day to day -- living in the thick of society, hustling his career forward. A monument to his great personality.' John Gross, Sunday Telegraph 'The long serpentine line of Oscar Wilde's career is traced here like some fiery scarlet thread. This is a marvellous volume, fully worthy of Wilde's own genius.' Peter Ackroyd, The Times 'These letters give us the human side of Wilde's legend and its human cost.' Philip Hoare, Observer 'A whole world is here. *****' Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday 'The most comprehensive collection yet of Wilde's correspondence, charting his development from ambitious young man about town to literary dandy and tortured outcast.' Guardian 'Oscar Wilde writes his own life in the newly revised and expanded Complete Letters. The one essential book on the subject.' The Independent Books of the Year 'The scholarship of Holland and Hart-Davis is as impeccable as their subject's wit, while the letters themselves bear comparison with any more conventional form of literary art. They are filled with the terror and the pity of Wilde's extravagant career, not untouched by pathos, and irradiated always by perpetual and wilful laughter.' Times Literary Supplement 'Meticulously edited, intelligently annotated, the letters were a biographer's dream.' Irish Times 'These 1,500 letters are always candid, always humorous (even in adversity) and add substantially to Wilde's reputation not only as a wit but as an intellectual heavyweight.' The Times Books of the Year

'These letters give us the human side of Wilde's legend and its human cost.' Observer 'The most comprehensive collection yet of Wilde's correspondence, charting his development from ambitious young man about town to literary dandy and tortured outcast.' Guardian 'To have the full weight of his letters published is almost like living his live with him... one puts down the letters heavy with mixed emotions - admiration, sorrow and exasperation.' Daily Mail 'You get a wonderful sense, such as even the best biography couldn't quite give, of Wilde in action from day to day - living in the thick of society, hustling his career forward. The letters are quick and alert rather than reflective. For all his talk of himself as an artist, their qualities are primarily journalistic.' Sunday Telegraph 'Even those who know it well will once more fall under the spell of Wilde's charmed words as he sings his way to oblivion. This is a marvellous volume, fully worthy of Wilde's own genius.' The Times 'Oscar Wilde writes his own life in the newly revised and expanded Complete Letters. The one essential book on the subject.' The Independent Books of the Year 'The scholarship of Holland and Hart-Davis is as impeccable as their subject's wit, while the letters themselves bear comparison with any more conventional form of literary art. They are filled with the terror and the pity of Wilde's extravagant career, not untouched by pathos, and irradiated always by perpetual and wilful laughter.' Times Literary Supplement 'Meticulously edited, intelligently annotated, the letters were a biographer's dream.' Irish Times 'These 1,500 letters are always candid, always humorous (even in adversity) and add substantially to Wilde's reputation not only as a wit but as an intellectual heavyweight.' The Times Books of the Year

To celebrate the centenary of Oscar Wilde's death, Fourth Estate have published the most complete edition of his letters to date. They complement the current exhibition of Wilde's life and death at the British Library, where it is possible to see the original manuscript of the 'De Profundis', Wilde's long love-letter written from Reading jail to Lord Alfred Douglas, which is reproduced in this collection of letters. The collaboration between the two compilers of the volume, Sir Rupert Hart-Davis and Wilde's only grandson Merlin Holland, allows the reader to enjoy a romp through Wilde's short, but adventure-packed life, from the rather staid letters of a 14-year-old at boarding school, to the moving and clear letters he wrote to his wife, and to all his friends (among them, Lillie Langtry). We also get to know Wilde the witty journalist, from the inclusion of many polite and impolite letters of complaint that he wrote on an almost weekly basis to the newspapers, his tone sarcastic, pompous, but always eminently controlled. It is a lengthy journey that the reader of this volume embarks on, but at the end he is left with a renewed sense of acquaintance with one of the great playwrights and humorists of the 19th century. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Merlin Holland is Oscar Wilde's only grandson. He is a journalist and the author of The Wilde Album (published by Fourth Estate) and the executor of the Wilde estate. Sir Rupert Hart-Davis was well regarded as an editor, and was executor to various literary figures of the mid-century. In 1962, he compiled a collection of Oscar Wilde's letters.

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