Oscar's Books
  • Published: 30 November 2013
  • ISBN: 9781446496107
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 384
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Oscar's Books

A Journey Around the Library of Oscar Wilde

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A fresh and delightful examination of the character of Oscar Wilde by looking at him through the prism of the books he read.

For Wilde, as for many people, reading could be as powerful and transformative an experience as falling in love. He devoured books, talked books, luxuriated in books and lavished books on his friends- they played, too, a vital part in his seductions of young men.

Oscar's Books tells the story of Wilde's life through his reading, from his childhood in Dublin, where he was nurtured on Celtic myth, Romantic poetry and Irish folklore; through his undergraduate years in which he built his intellect out of books; to prison, where his friends supplied him with literature which saved his sanity; to his final years in Paris where he consoled himself with old favourites such as Flaubert and Balzac.

Fresh, utterly engaging and wholly original, Oscar's Books is an entirely new kind of biography.
  • Published: 30 November 2013
  • ISBN: 9781446496107
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 384
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Thomas Wright

Thomas Wright was educated at Saint Thomas More School, Bedford and Magdalen College, Oxford. He is the author of Table Talk; the groundbreaking Oscar's Books, a biography of his hero Oscar Wilde through his reading; Circulation, a biography of William Harvey, which won the Wellcome Trust Book Prize in 2012. He lives in Oxford.

Also by Thomas Wright

Circulation
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Praise for Oscar's Books

Entertaining and highly original, Oscar's Books is animated by a real intellectual passion. It should be read by anyone interested in Wilde or in the art of literary biography

Peter Ackroyd

A charmingly eccentric attempt to tell Wilde's story through his reading

Independent on Sunday

A remarkable new biography...the result is an original and compelling book

Literary Review

An enthralling biography of Wilde the reader

John Dugdale, Guardian

An original version of one of history's great writers and book-lovers

Mike Wade, The Times

In suitably lyrical language, Wright presents a portrait of this artist painted with the extensive palette of European literature - a colourful, sensitive and lavish image with which any bibliophile could empathise

Christine Madden, Irish Times

Intriguing...he has written an indispensible guide

Daily Telegraph

No other scholar of Wilde has succeeded so well in moving into Oscar's head

Irish Times

The premise of the book is gorgeous...the book is both thorough and intriguing

Guardian

This arresting book on Oscar Wilde has much to commend it

Independent

Wholly original book about reading, its comforts and its perils, an eccentric landmark in the art of literary biography

Mail on Sunday

Wright's account of Wilde's life is fun and thorough...behind Wright's light touch lies a thoughtful, illuminating book

Gay Times