My favourite Oscar biography

Not finishing this...

Tour de Force, generous, magisterial… cannot rave enough about Ellman’s biography or Wilde, which stands on its own as charming even without zingers from Oscar on nearly every page. What a saint Oscar was and what brutes the Victorians were, none of them more so than Bosie (and his nut-job father), who out Victorian the lot of them with their ceaseless selfishness, pangs of repression, and cruelty. We think of Wilde as a wit in an aubergine velvet blazer, and he is that for a short while, but what is most indelible here is his martyrdom. From the moment of the libel trial, to his cross examination, his imprisonment, his abandonment and betrayal by so many of the people he made and entertained, and finally his destitution in Paris, as a second Verlaine, missing his front teeth, flaking skin rash ointment from his seat in the back of the cafe, drifting about town begging at least from those who don’t pretend he doesn’t exist… there is no more undeserved end for someone who seemed innately kind, generous, committed to beauty, a harm to no one. He’d delight in his enduring immortality even if he’d probably find most of us hopelessly lâche.

Took a Victorian Culture course (history) in college my senior year and read this cover to cover while working on a term paper about Wilde's sodomy trial. I guess everyone goes through their Oscar Wilde phase. Mine just had lots of cassette tapes by The Smiths to go with it. This book has been on my shelves ever since as a reminder. I'm pretty sure it's still the definitive biography. (No? Yes?)