Wilde in America: Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity

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Author :
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393245918
Total Pages : 271 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (932 download)

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Book Synopsis Wilde in America: Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity by : David M. Friedman

Download or read book Wilde in America: Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity written by David M. Friedman and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-10-06 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Oscar Wilde’s landmark 1882 American tour explains how this quotable literary eminence became famous for being famous. On January 3, 1882, Oscar Wilde, a twenty-seven-year-old “genius”—at least by his own reckoning—arrived in New York. The Dublin-born Oxford man had made such a spectacle of himself in London with his eccentric fashion sense, acerbic wit, and extravagant passion for art and home design that Gilbert & Sullivan wrote an operetta lampooning him. He was hired to go to America to promote that work by presenting lectures on interior decorating. But Wilde had his own business plan. He would go to promote himself. And he did, traveling some 15,000 miles and visiting 150 American cities as he created a template for fame creation that still works today. Though Wilde was only the author of a self-published book of poems and an unproduced play, he presented himself as a “star,” taking the stage in satin breeches and a velvet coat with lace trim as he sang the praises of sconces and embroidered pillows—and himself. What Wilde so presciently understood is that fame could launch a career as well as cap one. David M. Friedman’s lively and often hilarious narrative whisks us across nineteenth-century America, from the mansions of Gilded Age Manhattan to roller-skating rinks in Indiana, from an opium den in San Francisco to the bottom of the Matchless silver mine in Colorado—then the richest on earth—where Wilde dined with twelve gobsmacked miners, later describing their feast to his friends in London as “First course: whiskey. Second course: whiskey. Third course: whiskey.” But, as Friedman shows, Wilde was no mere clown; he was a strategist. From his antics in London to his manipulation of the media—Wilde gave 100 interviews in America, more than anyone else in the world in 1882—he designed every move to increase his renown. There had been famous people before him, but Wilde was the first to become famous for being famous. Wilde in America is an enchanting tale of travel and transformation, comedy and capitalism—an unforgettable story that teaches us about our present as well as our past.

Making Oscar Wilde

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198802366
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (988 download)

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Book Synopsis Making Oscar Wilde by : Michèle Mendelssohn

Download or read book Making Oscar Wilde written by Michèle Mendelssohn and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Packed with new evidence, "Making Oscar Wilde" tells the untold story of a local Irish eccentric who became a global cultural icon. This must-read book dramatizes Oscar Wilde's remarkable rise in Victorian England and post-Civil War America. Michele Mendelssohn interweaves biography and social history to reveal a life like no other.

The Invention of Oscar Wilde

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Author :
Publisher : Reaktion Books
ISBN 13 : 1789144221
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (891 download)

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Book Synopsis The Invention of Oscar Wilde by : Nicholas Frankel

Download or read book The Invention of Oscar Wilde written by Nicholas Frankel and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2021-06-10 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One should either wear a work of art, or be a work of art,” Oscar Wilde once declared. In The Invention of Oscar Wilde, Nicholas Frankel explores Wilde’s self-creation as a “work of art” and a carefully constructed cultural icon. Frankel takes readers on a journey through Wilde’s inventive, provocative life, from his Irish origins—and their public erasure—through his challenges to traditional concepts of masculinity and male sexuality, his marriage and his affairs with young men, including his great love Lord Alfred Douglas, to his criminal conviction and final years of exile in France. Along the way, Frankel takes a deep look at Wilde’s writings, paradoxical wit, and intellectual convictions.

Declaring His Genius

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Author :
Publisher : Belknap Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674066960
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (669 download)

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Book Synopsis Declaring His Genius by : Roy Morris Jr.

Download or read book Declaring His Genius written by Roy Morris Jr. and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2013-01-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arriving at the port of New York in 1882, a 27-year-old Oscar Wilde quipped he had “nothing to declare but my genius.” But as Roy Morris, Jr., reveals in this sparkling narrative, Wilde was, for the first time in his life, underselling himself. A chronicle of the sensation that was Wilde’s eleven-month speaking tour of America, Declaring His Genius offers an indelible portrait of both Oscar Wilde and the Gilded Age. Wilde covered 15,000 miles, delivered 140 lectures, and met everyone who was anyone. Dressed in satin knee britches and black silk stockings, the long-haired apostle of the British Aesthetic Movement alternately shocked, entertained, and enlightened a spellbound nation. Harvard students attending one of his lectures sported Wildean costume, clutching sunflowers and affecting world-weary poses. Denver prostitutes enticed customers by crying: “We know what makes a cat wild, but what makes Oscar Wilde?” Whitman hoisted a glass to his health, while Ambrose Bierce denounced him as a fraud. Wilde helped alter the way post–Civil War Americans—still reeling from the most destructive conflict in their history—understood themselves. In an era that saw rapid technological changes, social upheaval, and an ever-widening gap between rich and poor, he delivered a powerful anti-materialistic message about art and the need for beauty. Yet Wilde too was changed by his tour. Having conquered America, a savvier, more mature writer was ready to take on the rest of the world. Neither Wilde nor America would ever be the same.

Lorine Niedecker

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Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 052093542X
Total Pages : 497 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis Lorine Niedecker by : Lorine Niedecker

Download or read book Lorine Niedecker written by Lorine Niedecker and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-05-23 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Brontës had their moors, I have my marshes," Lorine Niedecker wrote of flood-prone Black Hawk Island in Wisconsin, where she lived most of her life. Her life by water, as she called it, could not have been further removed from the avant-garde poetry scene where she also made a home. Niedecker is one of the most important poets of her generation and an essential member of the Objectivist circle. Her work attracted high praise from her peers--Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Louis Zukofsky, Cid Corman, Clayton Eshleman--with whom she exchanged life-sustaining letters. Niedecker was also a major woman poet who interrogated issues of gender, domesticity, work, marriage, and sexual politics long before the modern feminist movement. Her marginal status, both geographically and as a woman, translates into a major poetry. Niedecker's lyric voice is one of the most subtle and sensuous of the twentieth century. Her ear is constantly alive to sounds of nature, oddities of vernacular speech, textures of vowels and consonants. Often compared to Emily Dickinson, Niedecker writes a poetry of wit and emotion, cosmopolitan experimentation and down-home American speech. This much-anticipated volume presents all of Niedecker's surviving poetry, plays, and creative prose in the sequence of their composition. It includes many poems previously unpublished in book form plus all of Niedecker's surviving 1930s surrealist work and her 1936-46 folk poetry, bringing to light the formative experimental phases of her early career. With an introduction that offers an account of the poet's life and notes that provide detailed textual information, this book will be the definitive reader's and scholar's edition of Niedecker's work.

Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Aesthetic Culture

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Author :
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 0748697543
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (486 download)

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Book Synopsis Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Aesthetic Culture by : Michele Mendelssohn

Download or read book Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Aesthetic Culture written by Michele Mendelssohn and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-27 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, the first fully sustained reading of Henry James's and Oscar Wilde's relationship, reveals why the antagonisms between both authors are symptomatic of the cultural oppositions within Aestheticism itself.

Oscar Wilde in America

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Author :
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252034724
Total Pages : 210 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis Oscar Wilde in America by : Oscar Wilde

Download or read book Oscar Wilde in America written by Oscar Wilde and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-01-06 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Better known in 1882 as a cultural icon than a serious writer, Oscar Wilde was brought to North America for a major lecture tour on Aestheticism and the decorative arts. With characteristic aplomb, he adopted the role as the ambassador of Aestheticism, and he tried out a number of phrases, ideas, and strategies that ultimately made him famous as a novelist and playwright. This exceptional volume cites all ninety-one of Wilde's interviews and contains transcripts of forty-eight of them, and it also includes his lecture on his travels in America.

Oscar Wilde

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Author :
Publisher : Knopf
ISBN 13 : 0525656367
Total Pages : 865 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (256 download)

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Book Synopsis Oscar Wilde by : Matthew Sturgis

Download or read book Oscar Wilde written by Matthew Sturgis and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 865 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fullest, most textural, most accurate—most human—account of Oscar Wilde's unique and dazzling life—based on extensive new research and newly discovered materials, from Wilde's personal letters and transcripts of his first trial to newly uncovered papers of his early romantic (and dangerous) escapades and the two-year prison term that shattered his soul and his life. "Simply the best modern biography of Wilde." —Evening Standard Drawing on material that has come to light in the past thirty years, including newly discovered letters, documents, first draft notebooks, and the full transcript of the libel trial, Matthew Sturgis meticulously portrays the key events and influences that shaped Oscar Wilde's life, returning the man "to his times, and to the facts," giving us Wilde's own experience as he experienced it. Here, fully and richly portrayed, is Wilde's Irish childhood; a dreamy, aloof boy; a stellar classicist at boarding school; a born entertainer with a talent for comedy and a need for an audience; his years at Oxford, a brilliant undergraduate punctuated by his reckless disregard for authority . . . his arrival in London, in 1878, "already noticeable everywhere" . . . his ten-year marriage to Constance Lloyd, the father of two boys; Constance unwittingly welcoming young men into the household who became Oscar's lovers, and dying in exile at the age of thirty-nine . . . Wilde's development as a playwright. . . becoming the high priest of the aesthetic movement; his successes . . . his celebrity. . . and in later years, his irresistible pull toward another—double—life, in flagrant defiance and disregard of England's strict sodomy laws ("the blackmailer's charter"); the tragic story of his fall that sent him to prison for two years at hard labor, destroying his life and shattering his soul.

Wilde's Women

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Author :
Publisher : ABRAMS
ISBN 13 : 1468313266
Total Pages : 408 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (683 download)

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Book Synopsis Wilde's Women by : Eleanor Fitzsimons

Download or read book Wilde's Women written by Eleanor Fitzsimons and published by ABRAMS. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A lively debut biography of the flamboyant Irish writer . . . focusing on the women who loved and supported him” (Kirkus Reviews). In this essential work, Eleanor Fitzsimons reframes Oscar Wilde’s story and his legacy through the women in his life, including such scintillating figures as Florence Balcombe; actress Lillie Langtry; and his tragic and witty niece, Dolly, who, like Wilde, loved fast cars, cocaine, and foreign women. Fresh, revealing, and entertaining, full of fascinating detail and anecdotes, Wilde’s Women relates the untold story of how a beloved writer and libertine played a vitally sympathetic role on behalf of many women, and how they supported him in the midst of a Victorian society in the process of changing forever. “Fitzsimons reminds us of the many writers, actresses, political activists, professional beauties and aristocratic ladies who helped shape the life and legend of the era’s greatest wit, esthete and sexual martyr . . . provide[s] a potted biography of the multitalented writer and gay icon . . . highly enjoyable.” —The Washington Post “Fitzsimons brilliantly calls attention to the progressive ideas and beliefs which drew the most daring and interesting women of the time to his side. The depth and painstaking care of Fitzsimons’ research is a fitting tribute to Wilde’s fascinating life and exquisite writing—and really, what better compliment is there than that?” —High Voltage

Approaches to Teaching the Works of Oscar Wilde

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Author :
Publisher : Approaches to Teaching World L
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Approaches to Teaching the Works of Oscar Wilde by : Philip E. Smith

Download or read book Approaches to Teaching the Works of Oscar Wilde written by Philip E. Smith and published by Approaches to Teaching World L. This book was released on 2008 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is both a challenge and a pleasure to teach the works of Oscar Wilde, "the master of paradox," in the words of this volume's editor. Wilde wrote at a pivotal moment between the Victorian period and modernism, and his work is sometimes considered prescient of the postmodern age. He is now taught in a variety of university courses: in literature, theater, criticism, Irish studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and gay studies. This volume, like others in the MLA series Approaches to Teaching World Litereature, is divided into two parts. The first, "Materials," suggests editions, resources, and criticism, both in print and online, that may be useful for the teacher. The second part, "Approaches," contains twenty-five essays that discuss Wilde's stories, fairy tales, poetry, plays, essays, letters, and life�from the perspective of a wide range of disciplines.

The Fall of the House of Wilde

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Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1608199886
Total Pages : 512 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (81 download)

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Book Synopsis The Fall of the House of Wilde by : Emer O'Sullivan

Download or read book The Fall of the House of Wilde written by Emer O'Sullivan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first biography of Oscar Wilde that places him within the context of his family and social and historical milieu--a compelling volume that finally tells the whole story. It's widely known that Oscar Wilde was precociously intellectual, flamboyant, and hedonistic--but lesser so that he owed these characteristics to his parents. Oscar's mother, Lady Jane Wilde, rose to prominence as a political journalist, advocating a rebellion against colonialism in 1848. Proud, involved, and challenging, she opened a salon and was known as the most scintillating hostess of her day. She passed on her infectious delight in the art of living to Oscar, who drank it in greedily. His father, Sir William Wilde, was acutely conscious of injustices of the social order. He laid the foundations for the Celtic cultural renaissance in the belief that culture would establish a common ground between the privileged and the poor, Protestant and Catholic. But Sir William was also a philanderer, and when he stood accused of sexually assaulting a young female patient, the scandal and trial sent shockwaves through Dublin society. After his death, the Wildes decamped to London where Oscar burst irrepressibly upon the scene. The one role that didn't suit him was that of Victorian husband, as his wife, Constance, was to discover. For beneath his swelling head was a self-destructive itch: a lifelong devourer of attention, Oscar was unable to recognize when the party was over. Ultimately, his trial for indecency heralded the death of decadence--and his own. In a major repositioning of our first modern celebrity, The Fall of the House of Wilde identifies Oscar Wilde as a member of one of the most dazzling Irish American families of Victorian times, and places him in the broader social, political, and religious context. It is a fresh and perceptive account of one of the most prominent characters of the late nineteenth century.

Declaring His Genius

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Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674071395
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Declaring His Genius by : Roy Morris Jr.

Download or read book Declaring His Genius written by Roy Morris Jr. and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-07 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arriving at the port of New York in 1882, a 27-year-old Oscar Wilde quipped he had “nothing to declare but my genius.” But as Roy Morris, Jr., reveals in this sparkling narrative, Wilde was, for the first time in his life, underselling himself. A chronicle of the sensation that was Wilde’s eleven-month speaking tour of America, Declaring His Genius offers an indelible portrait of both Oscar Wilde and the Gilded Age. Wilde covered 15,000 miles, delivered 140 lectures, and met everyone who was anyone. Dressed in satin knee britches and black silk stockings, the long-haired apostle of the British Aesthetic Movement alternately shocked, entertained, and enlightened a spellbound nation. Harvard students attending one of his lectures sported Wildean costume, clutching sunflowers and affecting world-weary poses. Denver prostitutes enticed customers by crying: “We know what makes a cat wild, but what makes Oscar Wilde?” Whitman hoisted a glass to his health, while Ambrose Bierce denounced him as a fraud. Wilde helped alter the way post–Civil War Americans—still reeling from the most destructive conflict in their history—understood themselves. In an era that saw rapid technological changes, social upheaval, and an ever-widening gap between rich and poor, he delivered a powerful anti-materialistic message about art and the need for beauty. Yet Wilde too was changed by his tour. Having conquered America, a savvier, more mature writer was ready to take on the rest of the world. Neither Wilde nor America would ever be the same.

The Fall of the House of Wilde

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Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1608199878
Total Pages : 529 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (81 download)

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Book Synopsis The Fall of the House of Wilde by : Emer O'Sullivan

Download or read book The Fall of the House of Wilde written by Emer O'Sullivan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first biography of Oscar Wilde that places him within the context of his family and social and historical milieu--a compelling volume that finally tells the whole story. It’s widely known that Oscar Wilde was precociously intellectual, flamboyant, and hedonistic--but lesser so that he owed these characteristics to his parents. Oscar’s mother, Lady Jane Wilde, rose to prominence as a political journalist, advocating a rebellion against colonialism in 1848. Proud, involved, and challenging, she opened a salon and was known as the most scintillating hostess of her day. She passed on her infectious delight in the art of living to Oscar, who drank it in greedily. His father, Sir William Wilde, was acutely conscious of injustices of the social order. He laid the foundations for the Celtic cultural renaissance in the belief that culture would establish a common ground between the privileged and the poor, Protestant and Catholic. But Sir William was also a philanderer, and when he stood accused of sexually assaulting a young female patient, the scandal and trial sent shockwaves through Dublin society. After his death, the Wildes decamped to London where Oscar burst irrepressibly upon the scene. The one role that didn’t suit him was that of Victorian husband, as his wife, Constance, was to discover. For beneath his swelling head was a self-destructive itch: a lifelong devourer of attention, Oscar was unable to recognize when the party was over. Ultimately, his trial for indecency heralded the death of decadence--and his own. In a major repositioning of our first modern celebrity, The Fall of the House of Wilde identifies Oscar Wilde as a member of one of the most dazzling Irish American families of Victorian times, and places him in the broader social, political, and religious context. It is a fresh and perceptive account of one of the most prominent characters of the late nineteenth century.

The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde

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Author :
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0786734922
Total Pages : 576 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (867 download)

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Book Synopsis The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde by : Neil McKenna

Download or read book The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde written by Neil McKenna and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-03-05 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, Neil McKenna provides stunning new insight into the tumultuous sexual and psychological worlds of this brilliant and tormented figure. McKenna charts Wilde’s astonishing odyssey through London’s sexual underworld, and provides explosive new evidence of the political machinations behind Wilde’s trials for sodomy. Dazzlingly written and meticulously researched, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde offers a vividly original portrait of a troubled genius who chose to martyr himself for the cause of love between men.

Impressions of America

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 48 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (39 download)

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Book Synopsis Impressions of America by : Oscar Wilde

Download or read book Impressions of America written by Oscar Wilde and published by . This book was released on 1906 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Wilde Album

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Author :
Publisher : Henry Holt and Company
ISBN 13 : 9780805058949
Total Pages : 194 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (589 download)

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Book Synopsis Wilde Album by : Merlin Holland

Download or read book Wilde Album written by Merlin Holland and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 1998-04-15 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most comprehensive collection of photographs and images of Wilde--compiled by his only grandson. Oscar Wilde was one of the first and unquestionably one of the greatest self-publicists who ever lived. With that exceptional streak of modernity that characterized much of his life and work, he understood the power of the image in his campaign to promote the self. As early as his Oxford days, he had himself photographed with his contemporaries in loud checked suits of the latest fashion. The Wilde Album now publishes more of these images of Oscar than have ever been seen together before, as well as later photographs, some previously unpublished, from the family archive, including rare snapshots of Oscar in his last years in Italy; the famous sitting in New York for Napoleon Sarony in fur coat and velvet suit; and the good, the bad, and the vicious caricatures, cartoons, and lithographs. In the accompanying text, Merlin Holland examines Wilde's life as reflected in the photographs and images, paying particular attention to his relationships with friends, family, and lovers, as well as the profound influence of his Irish upbringing. He also investigates the reasons for the adverse opinions his work engered and the background to the famous legal battles that finally led to imprisonment and exile.

The Secret Life of the Savoy

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Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1643137395
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (431 download)

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Book Synopsis The Secret Life of the Savoy by : Olivia Williams

Download or read book The Secret Life of the Savoy written by Olivia Williams and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The captivating story of the famed Savoy Hotel’s founders, told through three generations—and one hundred years—of glamour and high society. For the gondoliers-themed birthday dinner, the hotel obligingly flooded the courtyard to conjure the Grand Canal of Venice. Dinner was served on a silk-lined floating gondola, real swans were swimming in the water, and as a final flourish, a baby elephant borrowed from London Zoo pulled a five-foot high birthday cake. In three generations, the D'Oyly Carte family and London's Savoy Hotel pioneered the idea of the luxury hotel and the modern theater, propelled Gilbert and Sullivan to lasting stardom, made Oscar Wilde a transatlantic celebrity, inspired a P. G. Wodehouse series, and popularized early jazz, electric lights, and Art Deco. Following the history of the iconic Savoy Hotel through three generations of the D'Oyly Carte family, The Secret Life of the Savoy brings to life the extraordinary cultural legacy of the most famous hotel in the world.